Zionism’s Maritime Revolution: The Yishuv’s Hold on the Land of Israel’s Sea and Shores, 1917–1948 9783110633528, 9783110629637

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Kobi Cohen-Hattab Zionism’s Maritime Revolution

Kobi Cohen-Hattab

Zionism’s Maritime Revolution

The Yishuv’s Hold on the Land of Israel’s Sea and Shores, 1917 – 1948

MAGNES

This book is published with the assistance of the James Amzalak Fund for Research in Historical Geography, which supports the series of Israel Studies in Historical Geography. Editorial Board: Yehoshua Ben-Arieh, Ruth Kark, Ran Aaronsohn, Rehav (Buni) Rubin The Department of Geography, Hebrew University of Jerusalem

ISBN 978-3-11-062963-7 e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-063352-8 e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-062996-5 Library of Congress Control Number: 2019936779 Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de. © 2019 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston & Hebrew University Magnes Press, Jerusalem Cover image: Eduard Edler (1887 – 1969), ‘TEL AVIV’ ship portrait, postcard, for Palestine Shipping Co. Ltd, 1935. Source: Lanz Collection, 241, Bitemuna, Israel. Printing and binding: CPI books GmbH, Leck www.degruyter.com

Contents Preface

VII

Introduction

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Chapter 1: Historical Background 9 9 The Sea and Mediterranean Culture The Sea and Colonialism 10 12 Jewish Nationalism, Zionism, and the Sea New Jewish Settlement in the Land of Israel and the Sea The Sea in the Land of Israel’s History 20 23 Maritime Activity during the Late Ottoman Period

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Chapter 2: Harbingers of Jewish Maritime Activity in the Land of Israel, 1917 – 1933 36 New Ideas: The Water Commission in Jaffa, 1919 – 1921 36 55 Early Jewish Activity in the Ports of Jaffa and Haifa Early Attempts to Purchase Ships and Establish Jewish Shipping 74 Companies The First Jewish Fishing Groups 76 Early Maritime Organizations and Professional Training 93 Chapter 3: Expanding Jewish Maritime Activity in the Land of Israel, 105 1934 – 1939 The Haifa Port 106 The Establishment of the Tel Aviv Port 126 143 The Emergence of Private Jewish Shipping Companies The Founding of the Jewish Agency’s Maritime and Fisheries Department 155 183 Growing Activity in Sports Associations 189 The Left-Right Political Divide in the Maritime Realm Chapter 4: Evolution during a Time of Paralysis: Jewish Maritime Activity in the Land of Israel during the Second World War, 1939 – 1945 200 The Land of Israel’s Ports during the Second World War 201 Shipping and Enlistment in the British Navy in the Second World War 208 210 Fishery in the Land of Israel during the Second World War

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Fishing Settlements during the Second World War 221 Maritime Training, Education, and Culture during the Second World War 233 Military Sea Training in the Haganah and Palmach during the Second World War 240 249 Chapter 5: The Road to Jewish Maritime Sovereignty, 1945 – 1948 Jewish Activity in the Land of Israel’s Ports, 1945 – 1948 250 256 Zim: A Jewish National Shipping Company Fishery and Fishing Settlements, 1945 – 1948 275 Maritime Training, Education, and Sports, 1945 – 1948 280 283 Military Maritime Training in the Palyam, 1945 – 1948 Conclusion and Discussion: The Sea in Zionist Thought and Endeavor: Inception, Evolution, and Ideology 289 Central Changes in the Mandate-Era Yishuv with Regard to the 290 Sea Ideologies and Tensions about the Sea in the Mandate-Era Yishuv 296 Bottom-up and Top-down History of the Zionist Hold on the 301 Sea Bibliography 303 Books and Articles 323 Archives Index of Persons

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Index of Subjects

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Index of Places

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Preface In the late sixties and early seventies, my maternal grandparents lived in Herzliya Pituah, in one of the first houses on the shoreline. It was a two-story home, with a lawn out front, adjacent to the gate to what is still known today as the Zevulun Beach. Fishermen waved poles on the beach, sailboats cruised on the horizon, and the sound of waves was always in the background. The “house in Herzliya,” as it was called by my family, evoked the fun of the summer, family get-togethers, freedom, good air—and, mostly, the sea and unmediated access to it. This is my first maritime memory. My second nautical memory is from age eighteen, when my father took me on a “roots trip.” We set out for his birthplace, Hamburg, a large and longstanding port city in Germany’s north. My father left Germany for the Land of Israel as a fourteen-year-old in 1935, two years after Hitler’s rise to power; his bar mitzvah at age thirteen took place in Hamburg’s synagogue. No trace remains of his family home and the school in which he studied; all he could do on our tour of the city’s restored streets was point to places where buildings had once stood. But at the port, another of the districts of his youth, many things remained intact, and well do I remember boating with him, his explanations about the port’s facilities, and the way he clung to memories of the past, which were evident on his face. The shore, ports, ships, and fishermen are the maritime images that inhabited my childhood and teenage memories. As a scholar of Israel’s history in the modern age, however, I noted the absence of research on the sea’s role in the chronicles of the new Jewish Zionist settlement in the land. Those studying the history of the new Jewish settlement tended, naturally, to occupy themselves with topics of terrestrial settlement, of agriculture, industry, and combat, or political or social topics. Very limited research exists on the land’s sea and lakes; there is not even one comprehensive work on the subject. An in-depth examination of different sources and publications about the sea’s role in the new Jewish settlement enterprise in the land led me to focus my research on the place of the sea in the Jewish Yishuv¹ in the Land of Israel in the time of the British Mandate, from 1917 to 1948. During this period, the rate of Jewish immigration to the land grew, Jewish settlement in both the city and countryside increased and expanded, the longing for national independence intensified—and at the same time, the Jewish-Arab national conflict grew. Slowly, the sea and its occupations became part of this struggle; the ideological conflicts  The Yishuv, literally “settlement,” refers to the Jewish community living in the Land of Israel before the establishment of the State of Israel. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110633528-001

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that developed within Jewish society in the Mandate years increased—including the conflict about the sea’s role in the pioneers’ new land. The research presented in this volume focuses on four spheres in the world of the sea—ports, shipping, fishing and fishing villages, and maritime education and training—from the perspective of the Yishuv, following the timeline of the British Mandate in Palestine. The analysis reveals that a gradual change was evident in the Yishuv Jews’ attitude to the sea and its shores during the period; the Jewish hold on the shores strengthened, and maritime awareness grew amongst members of the Yishuv. These processes lead us to the study’s key conclusion: in the mid-thirties, a “maritime revolution” began to take place in the Yishuv in the Land of Israel. The term “revolution” is no overstatement; it reflects the seismic shift and prominent developments that took place in the maritime world. The research thus brings to the fore the unique nature of the activity at sea in realizing the Zionist enterprise within the more general pioneering activity of the new Jewish settlement; it also highlights the Yishuv’s awakening and mobilization for activity in the various nautical spheres. These seminal, attitude-changing events, which brought the four spheres of the sea to rapid development and stood at the base of the maritime revolution in the Yishuv, took place between April and May of 1936. It was in the span of that month that Jaffa’s port was closed to the Jews and the Tel Aviv port opened. These two events underline, on one hand, the Yishuv’s great dependency on an outlet to the sea, a reliance that was illustrated when the Jaffa port closed; on the other hand, the inauguration of the first Jewish port roughly one month later, in the throes of the violent early days of the riots (1936 – 1939), demonstrates the potential of the sea in the worlds of settlement, finance, and politics. The establishment of the Tel Aviv port facilitated—for the first time—a vision of the Mediterranean Sea as the continuation of the land. It could now be seen not only as a natural boundary but rather as a space connecting the Land of Israel to the world, linking the Yishuv in the Land of Israel to Diaspora Jewry across the sea. Its establishment even paved the way for bringing maritime workers to a status equivalent to that of the pioneers who worked the land. Surprisingly, as noted, the development of the link between the Yishuv and the sea and its professions has not yet been the subject of a volume of comprehensive and methodical research, though studies have examined select maritime topics. This book uses primary and secondary sources on the Yishuv’s maritime activity, analyzed and presented together for the first time to form a complete picture of the increasing interest in the sea which became, as I will claim, a conceptual revolution in the second half of the British Mandate period. This volume is designed, then, to fill the lacunae in material about the sea in the narrative of the Yishuv’s formation in the Land of Israel; it will flesh out the great signifi-

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cance that the sea was known to hold within the realization of the Yishuv’s aspirations for political sovereignty in the period before the establishment of the State of Israel. This volume could never have been completed without the assistance so generously and willingly offered to me over the years. Amnon Loya first introduced me to the Land of Israel’s modern maritime world in the joint study we conducted about Mandate-era fishery in Lake Kinneret, and for that I am grateful. From that study, I moved on to the wide expanse of the sea, increasing my familiarity to other fields of research in the nautical world. In the years since, Amnon has graciously answered my every question. My thanks, too, to Avner Shatz, who made the Zim archive available to me and was there to answer all of my questions and requests regarding Zim’s history. Captain Hillel Yarkoni was available to answer my many queries on the various sea realms, and to him I owe a debt of gratitude. I am indebted to Dr. Daniella Ran for the time she spent sharing the fount of knowledge she possesses—both about the sea and shipping generally and about the same in the Land of Israel more specifically. My thanks go out to Carolina Spunberg-Inbar and Shlomit Kviti from the Herzl Institute for the Study of Zionism at the University of Haifa, who made the database of interviews from the project documenting the navy available to me. This database was a unique and significant collection of sources, detailing the naval defense activity that took place during the Second World War and after it, as told by dozens of partners in the endeavor. My thanks, too, to Eli Roman, secretary of the Haifa Historical Society, who saw the importance of my research and arranged for the kind support of the society’s members in the book’s publication. I am grateful to Brig. Gen. (res.) Rafi Apel, chair of the alumni association of the Marine Officers’ School in Acre and the nautical school in Haifa, who also generously supported the publication of the volume. I owe a special debt of gratitude to Brig. Gen. (res.) Nir Maor, a former navy man and the director of the Clandestine Immigration and Naval Museum in Haifa, for giving of his time to clarify maritime subjects. Nir put his all into any request I made for assistance; he was especially crucial in involving the Israel Navy Veterans Association members in promoting this volume and bringing the final product to press, and for that my heartfelt thanks go out to him and to them. It is a special privilege to thank Prof. Yehoshua Ben-Arieh, who read the manuscript and made important and useful suggestions. Yehoshua laid the groundwork for my academic career; he was my mentor in my work for both my graduate and doctoral degrees and he continues to accompany me with a tireless and endless devotion until today.

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I am pleased to extend my thanks to Prof. Oded Heilbronner for his wise insights and to my colleague and friend Prof. Doron Bar for his valuable ideas. My thanks, too, to man of the sea and my current student Giora Kadder, who also read the manuscript and helped identify points that needed fine-tuning. In the libraries and archives where I spent my time during my years of research, I found many documents that enriched my knowledge. I could not possibly note all of those who helped me at those institutions by name, but I remember them all and my heartfelt gratitude goes out to each and every one of them. Yad Izhak Ben-Zvi, through the Institute for Research on Eretz Yisrael led by Prof. Alon Kadish and his deputy Dr. Amnon Ramon, took it upon itself to publish the Hebrew book and I am indebted to the institute and its leaders. My thanks to the coordinating editors, Liat Oshry and Chaya Paz Cohen, for their efficiency and their tremendous help in preparing the manuscript for press as well as to Dafna Bar On for the language editing in Hebrew. I am also grateful to the members of my running group, Effie Shoham and Josh Goldberg, with whom I refined many of the subjects and issues discussed in this book during our runs. The publication of this book in English would not have been possible without the dedicated work of Deena Glickman, the translator and editor, whose extraordinary devotion and diligence ultimately brought the enterprise to its conclusion. I am pleased to thank Magnes Press and its managing director Jonathan Nadav as well as Dr. Julia Brauch, acquisitions editor for Jewish studies and history from De Gruyter Oldenbourg Press, for jointly taking upon themselves the publication of the book in its English form. Last but certainly not least, my family—my wife, my four children, my inlaws, and my sons-in-law—who were with me throughout the years of writing this volume. Their sense of humor was a breath of fresh air, helping lead my research to anchor on safe shores, and for that they have my utmost gratitude and love. Kobi Cohen-Hattab Jerusalem (“A port city on the shore of eternity”; Y. Amichai), 2019

Introduction David Ben-Gurion, speaking at a fishermen’s conference in Haifa in 1943, stated: “A dual Jewish revolution will take place: in the Jewish village and the Jewish sea. Both fuse sources of life with heroism and power. In both is man elevated—because in both man’s rule over nature arises. And that is the great human destiny. That is the great Jewish destiny. The earth is mostly sea. Our land—mostly sea. The shore of the land is not a border—but a bridge to the sea’s spaces in the west and south.”¹ With these words, Ben-Gurion articulated that the sea’s role in a future Jewish state would be twofold: First, the Jewish community’s hold on the Land of Israel’s shores would be crucial to the state’s power.² Second, the land’s coast would serve as a gateway to the water and a necessary link to countries across the sea. The present volume broadens the discussion on modern maritime history. It depicts the shift that took place in the approach of the Yishuv and its institutions to the idea of the “redemption of the sea.” In particular, it relates to the changes within the context of the Land of Israel’s evolving political status under British rule. Within the academic literature on the Zionist enterprise and settlement in the Land of Israel in the modern age, the sea has not yet been the subject of sufficient research, nor have the land’s harbors or the place of maritime professions (shipping, fishing, and port work) been adequately explored. A relatively small number of studies has been devoted to these subjects, including a few on the development of Israel’s ports,³ the evolution of Jewish presence in the land’s ports,⁴ the history of Hebrew shipping,⁵ and the fisheries industry.⁶ Several compositions were also written by individuals involved in the development of maritime

 Ben-Gurion, In the Battle, 3:193. All translations of quotations in the book are the translator’s.  While “Palestine” was the name of the political entity during the British Mandate period, the Jewish community, whose perspective is reflected throughout this book, referred to the land in Hebrew as “Erets Yiṥrael,” or “the Land of Israel.” For this reason, the volume uses the term “Land of Israel,” except in cases in which it is referring to the British government or its perspective.  Kark, Jaffa; Stern, “Tel Aviv Port”; Stern, “Port in Haifa,” in Naor and Ben-Artzi, Haifa; Avitsur, Rise and Fall; Fine, “British Policy.”  Bernstein, “Porters and Stevedores”; Dar, “Joint Jewish-Arab.”  Yarkoni, 75 Years; Yarkoni, The Sea; Ran, “German Immigration”; Cohen-Hattab, “Maritime Sovereignty.”  Cohen-Hattab and Loya, “Local Conflict”; Avneri, “Religious Pioneers”; Loya, “Fisheries Industry”; Loya, “Branco Zitzer”; Srougo, “Bay of Thessaloniki.” https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110633528-002

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Introduction

industries, who witnessed the events firsthand;⁷ others wrote about the events from their perspectives many years later.⁸ However, both of the latter constitute personal testimony, and contain no pretentions of research or critical analysis. Still other publications were composed dozens of years later by people who were uninvolved in the events when they transpired. At times, these accounts are very detailed and based on archival sources; however, the writers, not loyal to the academic approach, do not reference their sources in a detailed or organized manner and the scope of the documentation they use and the specific documents on which they base their work are unclear. Thus the writing, in some cases, does not contain a critical analysis of events.⁹ It appears, then, that no comprehensive composition, no study from a broad perspective, has used a critical approach and the totality of existing sources to relate the story of the sea and its professions within the chronicles of the Jewish settlement in the Land of Israel in the modern age in the years prior to the establishment of the state. The question lying at the foundation of this book is this: What were the processes that led to the increased Jewish hold on the sea and shores of the Land of Israel during the British Mandate period? In response, this book presents a reconstruction and analysis of the evolution of the Yishuv’s control of the Mediterranean Sea, Lake Kinneret,¹⁰ and the Hula Lake during the British Mandate period.¹¹ It does so using four primary Jewish maritime realms: ports, shipping, fishing, and maritime training. The analysis distinguishes between the developments in maritime activity, which took place primarily on the shores and the areas near the shore—especially ports, shoreside settlement, fishery, and mari Wydra, Fishing; Hanoch, Fishing Settlements; Tolkowsky, History of Jaffa; Tolkowsky, Jews and the Sea.  Helpern, Revival; Hayam, Sea Routes; Hayam, Ships’ Tales; Herman, Conquering a Route.  Sas, Book of the Sea; Eshel, Port of Haifa; Eshel, Campaign; Porat, Fishery Pioneers; Nun, Sea of Kinneret.  While is is often called the “Sea of Galilee,” the body of water is not a sea; as such, I have opted to use the term “Lake Kinneret.”  The book does not relate to two additional water sources in the Land of Israel: the Dead Sea and the Red Sea. The former is known primarily for the industrial development of its natural riches under the management of Moshe Novomeysky, who initiated the establishment of a potash factory during the Mandate period to exploit the Dead Sea’s riches, the Palestine Potash Company. For more on the subject, see Ran Or-Ner, “Salt of Earth”; Tal, Renaissance at Sodom. In the Gulf of Aqaba in the Red Sea no significant activity to develop the shore or sea professions took place during the period under discussion, save for a few plans that arose over the years but did not come to fruition. See, for example, Bar Kochba Meirovitz, Haifa, to Naftali Wydra, Haifa, Proposal for a plan for a fishing factory in the Gulf of Aqaba, 21 February 1940, S74/85, Central Zionist Archives (hereafter: CZA). For more on this, see Biger and Rubinstein, “Early Attempt.”

Introduction

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time agriculture—and developments in shipping, relating for the most part to the deep sea and crossing seas. Coastal shipping, too, was expressed in particular in cruises and reciprocity with other ports in neighboring countries. This distinction is expressed in the variance in psychological, cultural, technological, and economic processes that accompanied Jewish maritime activity, as we will see. In light of the relevant events that took place in the Mandate period, the book’s examination is divided into four primary periods, with a historical introduction preceding our discussion of the different stages. The first chapter of the book positions the subject within its historical context. It relates to the sea as it has been viewed over history, and particularly in the modern era, when nationalism and colonialism were at times linked to bodies of water. The chapter also focuses on how the sea was understood in Jewish history and on events that transpired directly before the British Mandate period, when the land was under Ottoman rule. The book’s second chapter is dedicated to analyzing the early stages of the conceptualization of the sea; it focuses on the Yishuv’s attitude to an independent Zionist maritime culture in the first half of the Mandate period. The chapter examines the period that began with the onset of British rule and ended in late 1933, when the new port in Haifa was inaugurated and a new era in the Yishuv’s attitude to the sea and its possibilities was ushered in. During this period, Jaffa’s Water Commission was founded, raising, for the first time, ideas about the Jewish hold on the sea and its shores on the public agenda; first attempts were made to purchase ships and to found Jewish shipping companies; a number of Jewish fishing groups formed; and several attempts were made to establish professional maritime organizations. However, throughout that period, the Yishuv and its leaders hung their hopes on terrestrial agricultural settlement, making no extraordinary attempts to hold on to the land’s shores and its related occupations. Indeed, the vast majority of attempts in the maritime field at the time failed or were short-lived; they did not bring about a significant change in the Zionist hold on the sea. The third chapter describes the shifts that took place in the Yishuv institutions’ approach to the sea and its professions from 1933 until the Second World War. These began with the first private Jewish shipping companies in 1934 and continued with the establishment of the Jewish Agency’s Maritime and Fisheries Department in 1935, the rioting (known as the “Arab Revolt”), and finally the closure of the land’s gates to civilian sea activity with the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939. One prominent milestone in that period was doubtless the 1936 founding of the Tel Aviv port, an independent Jewish port that functioned even in the absence of Jewish sovereignty in the land. Those years also saw a noticeable rise in the activity of maritime divisions in sports

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Introduction

and maritime associations. Moreover, the cornerstone was laid for the nautical school in Haifa. All of these advances fostered Jewish maritime awareness and its hold on the sea in the Land of Israel. The tremendous growth in the rate of Jewish immigration to the land—particularly during the Fifth Aliyah (1931– 1939), which was a central factor in the growing national conflict between the Jews and the Arabs—led to the expansion of the Jewish hold on the sea. For a time, particularly between the years 1933 and 1939, there was a growing recognition on the part of the Yishuv about the important link between the need for a hold on the sea and the realization of future Jewish sovereignty in different parts of the land; this resulted in the genesis of a “maritime revolution.” This revolution, which touched both the geographic maritime sphere and the consciousness of the Yishuv and the Jewish world, raised the issue of the sea on the agenda of the Yishuv and the central leadership in various spheres. In the fourth chapter, we take a look at the Second World War era and its influence on Jewish marine activity. At this time, the majority of the Yishuv’s ships were seized, the land’s gates were closed to civilian seafaring, port activity was limited to military pursuits only, and fishing was restricted. Nonetheless, alongside the imposed freeze, the war constituted an opportunity for development; hundreds of Yishuv members volunteered to serve in the British navy, where they amassed experience. With this experience under their belts, they were able to assimilate in various maritime professions with the end of the war—and, as is now evident, contributed to the Jewish hold on the sea. Moreover, the closing of the land’s ports at the time and the prohibition on seafaring activities in the Mediterranean were key to the appearance and development of the fish farming industry, which became a leading sector in the land’s fisheries industry and in Jewish fishery in particular. The book’s fifth chapter considers the three years spanning the end of the Second World War and the establishment of the State of Israel. It details the central activities that led to a new state of affairs: by mid-1948, with the departure of the British from the land and the establishment of the state, the Jewish Yishuv had a national shipping company (Zim), a complete hold on the land’s three active ports, significant advances in fishery and fish farming in particular, an expanding nautical school, and growing activity in various sports associations. All of the processes examined in the book, which took place during the British Mandate period, attest to a transition: while the Yishuv may have viewed the sea as marginal in its early years, by the establishment of the state there was a full and growing understanding of the sea’s importance and a transition to maritime independence in various seafaring spheres. These served, from that point on, as crucial infrastructure for establishing the general Jewish hold on Israel’s spaces as a sovereign state.

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The book focuses on the reciprocal relations that developed between the Mandate-era Jewish settlement in the land and the sea from a historical-geographic perspective. That is to say, its approach is based on an examination of the landscape’s variability as it relates to the activity that took place in the defined region and time.¹² More specifically, this is a geographic-historical-cultural study, in which human activity is examined in the historical landscape as it relates to the culture to which it belongs. The landscape, as a product of human activity, reflects the cultural values of the group or society that shaped it. In historical research on the cultural landscape, ideological processes and cultural values that stand at the base of the activity of the person acting in that space are examined, assuming that they constituted the motivating force and guided the activities that resulted in the spatial changes.¹³ The constant scientific evolution of geographical research in general in recent years has also affected the geographic-historical research method, and, as a result, it has deepened, specialties have developed in specific subjects, and it has split into secondary sectors. One of the more prominent subdivisions, discussed often in recent years on various research platforms, is known as “bottom-up” historical research.¹⁴ This approach targets historical events and cultural trends on the social and geographic periphery and the voices that are usually missing from history—the voice of the single, simple person or of the small community from the lower or average layers of society. In many cases, it is precisely in these places that the deeper currents of society are found. It is here that changes take place from which we can fully understand “larger” historical processes and events— which in the past were studied from the perspective of the religious or political establishment—and recreate them. The term “bottom-up” distinguishes this approach from “top-down” history, which researches institutional decision-making

 There is a breadth of theoretical literature on the geographic-historical approach. A few prominent examples are Baker, Historical Geography; Baker and Biger, Ideology and Landscape; Butlin, Historical Geography; Ben-Arieh, “Geographical Approach.” On Israeli historical geography, see Rubin, “Historical Geography.”  Ben-Artzi, From Germany, 32– 40.  One of the first people to use this approach for historical research was Edward Palmer Thompson, who discussed the importance of the working class in England in the late eighteenth century and early nineteenth century in understanding the “greater” processes in British society and culture at the time. See Thompson, English Working Class. For more on international research with this bent following Thompson’s pioneering work, see Gelber, History, Memory, and Propaganda, 75 – 80.

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Introduction

processes, ideas and deliberations of decision-makers, and patterns of general processes.¹⁵ In the history of the Jewish settlement in the Land of Israel, too, a trend of “bottom-up” research has developed in recent years, using the perspective of Jewish settlers involved in the events as they viewed them at the time.¹⁶ The study of the modern Land of Israel from a gender perspective—a dimension that has tended to be left in the shadows by Zionist historiography—has also benefited from this unique approach in recent years; studies have shed new light on the place of women within settlement and the realization of the Zionist idea.¹⁷ The analysis of the events under discussion in the book is presented against the backdrop of the tensions and the conflicting perceptions that characterized the Yishuv during the period. The conflicts can be understood as existing on four planes: First, the question of the land’s boundaries was disputed. The Yishuv’s central leadership and the Jewish Agency represented the workers’ perspective, and they viewed the terrestrial boundaries as the limits of the fundamental concept of “redeeming the land” and “conquering the wilderness.” In contrast, the Revisionist movement adopted the idea of unbounded territory, in which the sea was a central element; it was Ze’ev Jabotinsky who first coined the term “conquest of the sea.” Second, the world and lifestyle of the worker was debated. The political belief of the worker-socialist camp sided with the ideas of the collaborative agricultural settlements. The seafarers, on the other hand, spent their time on board a ship, distanced from the group and outside of the house for extended periods of time; as such, they were perceived as harming or opposing the principle of the group. Third, the question of initiatives’ origins arose. The social-economic world in which private and antiestablishment enterprises were active in various seafaring  The roots of this approach are in the Annales movement (so named for the journal Annales d’histoire économique et sociale), which was developed in the late twenties of the twentieth century in France by two French historians, Marc Bloch and Lucienne Febvre, who proposed focusing on the lives of the simple people in order to understand the greater social and economic processes, or examining the perspective of a simple soldier to understand military events and wars. See Burke, French Historical Revolution. For academic examples along these lines from recent years, see Peterson, Islamization from Below; Lyons, Writing Culture.  For a call for historical-social research in the study of the Land of Israel and its settlement, and specifically for “bottom-up” historical research, see Ben-Artzi, “Methods and Directions,” 368 – 69.  Shilo, Kark, and Hasam-Rokem, Jewish Women; Shilo, Gender Challenge.

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domains represented the civilian camp in many cases; thus, it was perceived as a manifestation of capitalism, as opposed to the socialist, establishment view. Finally, the social-cultural perception conferred an inferior image on sea professions. Those working at sea were painted as ruffians, in contrast with the pioneering agriculturalists, who made the wilderness bloom and were seen as the flag-bearers of Jewish labor. This volume seeks to clarify whether the Yishuv’s conquest of the sea was a financial and professional struggle between a few interest groups in the different maritime professions, and remained a peripheral phenomenon—geographically and socially and possibly even economically. If so, it would constitute a local, “bottom-up” process, with no significant influence on the greater processes at the time. Conversely, we will examine whether the struggle of the sea can be viewed as a “top-down” process—as it was seen through the eyes of the central Jewish political establishment, within the framework of the national struggle and as part of the Yishuv’s success in the national Jewish-Arab conflict that developed during the Mandate era. Setting out the different stages in the struggle over the sea will allow us to address this question, and it will be examined, as stated, by focusing on four central spheres that were involved in the sea and shores of the Land of Israel during the British Mandate: ports, shipping, fishery and fishing villages, and maritime training and education. In examining each of these, we may even be able to fashion a new interpretation about the evolving national struggle in the land at the time. Faithful to the geographic-historical research approach, the book’s methodology is inductive; it collects the many sources touching on the era, familiarizes the reader with them, and studies them individually. The volume’s title, which states that it is occupied with the Yishuv’s hold on the land’s sea and shores from 1917 to 1948 from the perspective of the Zionist movement, indicates that, naturally, most of the primary and archival sources will originate in the Central Zionist Archive. Indeed, the materials found there shed light on the vast majority of the research topics discussed in the book. Material from other sources has also been used—Mandate government sources found in the state archive; materials from municipal archives, such as the Haifa municipality archive, or archives of commercial companies, such as the Zim archive; various types of journalism at the time, including daily, weekly, and monthly press as well as professional and commercial journalism (from shipping companies, for example); and biographies, autobiographies, and memoirs of people of the time, relating directly or indirectly to some the book’s subjects. Along with the various primary sources, many secondary sources were used, including articles and academic literature on the sea and sea professions in the chronicles of the Land of Israel, on events at the time that were linked to the place of the sea in the era, and on spe-

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Introduction

cific issues relating in one way or another to the sea and its occupations during the Mandate era. The book’s central assertion is that a “maritime revolution” took place during the British Mandate period. This assumed shift in the Yishuv’s approach to the sea arose with the leadership institutions’ recognition of the critical value of the sea in institutional independence and sovereignty and the necessity of ruling the outlet to the sea and of various maritime professions. In fact, recent discoveries of gas fields in the State of Israel’s territorial waters once again drive home the significance of the sea, proving the vision of a nation and land with a hold on its shores even more prescient. The revolution that took place in the British Mandate era, then, has reverberations that continue to be felt today.

Chapter 1: Historical Background The Sea and Mediterranean Culture In examining the links between man and the sea over time, a number of categories can be assessed: the sea as a biological space offering financial gain (in, for example, fishery); seas and oceans as secondary, alternate, or primary transport pathways for goods and people; the sea as the arena of maritime powers’ struggle for control, influence, and defense of maritime interests; the sea as a geographic space in climate theory, ocean geography, and the like; the sea as a space in which unique technologies are used, as in the development of seagoing vessels; the sea in the leisure culture that develops along the beaches—swimming, sailing, and yachting; and the sea as a source of inspiration for culture and art.¹ All of these features were clearly expressed during the Industrial Revolution and the nineteenth-century era of colonial imperialism. Aside from the growing study of the sea’s different features, the period also witnessed an especially large technological evolution in shipping and the absolute control of superpowers—foremost Great Britain—was evident in the existing sea routes. An examination of the sea’s significance and the reciprocity that developed between it and human culture throughout different periods in history reveals that the first and central locus of the relationship between the two was the Mediterranean Sea, which was, for thousands of years, a hub of cultural development for the civilizations along its coasts. The Mediterranean connects three continents, three religions, and thousands of years of civilization; as such, it was a channel of great mutual influence and cultural exchange. Historian Fernand Braudel’s book The Mediterranean is considered one of the first and most essential in modern historical research. Braudel attempts to capture all possible dimensions of research surrounding the Mediterranean Sea. He includes approaches from sociology and anthropology to economics, psychology, geography, and cultural research, all of which contribute to the development of indepth explanations for the variability of Mediterranean society over time. Braudel believed that similar natural and climate conditions in the entire Mediterranean Basin yielded a Mediterranean civilization.² Historian Joshua Prawer de-

 Broeze, Brides of the Sea, 1– 28.  Braudel was one of the central shapers of the Annales School mentioned earlier. For more, see Braudel, Mediterranean. For more on the Mediterranean and Braudel’s historiographic totalhttps://doi.org/10.1515/9783110633528-003

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fined Mediterranean culture as the religions and cultures created on the shores of the Mediterranean or proximate to them which influenced one another until a symbiosis, a—sometimes uncomfortable—cohabitation, developed between them.³ The unity of the Mediterranean Basin is also the point of origin of historian Shelomo Dov Goitein, whose monumental five-volume study, A Mediterranean Society, describes a Middle-Ages Jewish society situated within Mediterranean geography and culture. However, the idea of the Mediterranean as a unifying space has had many detractors, most prominently Belgian historian Henri Pirrene. Pirenne emphasized the infiltration of Islam to the Mediterranean Basin as early as the seventh century and the closure—if partial—of the Mediterranean to the transport of merchandise as a primary reason for the lessening importance of southern Europe, the decline of international commerce, and the crumbling of classical culture. From the eighth century to the eighteenth, the Mediterranean was divided. Its southern, Muslim, shore opposed its northern, Christian, one, and it was characterized by tensions between nations, cultures, and religions.⁴

The Sea and Colonialism Beginning in the nineteenth century, as a result of colonialism, rapid industrialization, and the rise of the importance of global trade, conquest of the sea was accorded a central role in the growing colonialist processes taking place. However, no less importantly, it took center stage in particularistic nationalistic processes. One common definition of colonialism sees it as the political policy with which superpowers—primarily European ones—attained control over other territories in the world, transforming them into colonies under their rule.⁵ The firm establishment of the superpowers and their growing colonial influence relied in no small part on the strength of their advanced navies. European states,

global model, see Ouzi Elyada’s afterword in Braudel, Mediterranean, 153 – 76. Historian David Abulafia emphasizes that the history of the Mediterranean is in no small measure the history of the cradle of Western civilization and the evolution of interrelationships between civilizations that greatly influenced one another. See Abulafia, Great Sea. For more on the Mediterranean region as a bounded and defined historical and cultural unit, see Shavit, Mediterranean Anthology.  Prawer, “Jews, Christians, and Muslims,” 5.  Sivan, “Islam.” For more on the conflicting meanings of the Mediterranean Basin, see Ohana, Origins of Israeli Mythology, 351– 75; Ohana, “Jacqueline Kahanoff”; and below, in our discussion on the sea in the history of the Land of Israel.  Kohn, “Colonialism.”

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with England at their head, took over vast swaths of Africa, Asia, and Oceania. On the eve of the First World War, at the height of the imperial period, Britain ruled over approximately one quarter of the world’s terrestrial space.⁶ Britain’s imperial strength was bolstered by steamships and the telegraph, new technologies that made it possible to expand and entrench its reign in the colonial space under its rule; in 1902, for example, the entire British Empire was connected by telegraph networks.⁷ The European nations, and France and Britain in particular—world leaders and among the strongest superpowers in the nineteenth century—had marked advantages over the world’s countries economically, technologically, and militarily. Europe had a developed ironworking and weapons production industry (guns and canons), and the building of ships and oceangoing navigation developed there. These fields were reinforced, granting the countries a considerable advantage with the beginning of the use of steam at the end of the eighteenth century. This disparity, along with the imperialist aspirations of European countries, created a fertile breeding ground for the development of colonialism.⁸ Movement of people and goods between different colonies and states took place primarily by sea, leading to the development of ships as well as large port cities on the European continent. Alongside the development of the ports themselves and the extensive commerce that accompanied it, a wide-scale industry grew around the raw materials that arrived by sea. The large ships were perceived the world over as an expression of statehood and economic might.⁹ In the state of international affairs in the late nineteenth century two developments were evident: on one hand, the hegemony of the European superpowers; on the other—to a certain extent, as a response to the colonial reality—early signs of decolonization and the eruption of local nationalism. These processes would later become a force that undermined the foundations of great empires and superpowers. Thus the academic literature that analyzes the underpinnings of modern culture gives pride of place to the evolution of modern nationalism.

 Ferguson, Empire; Hyam, Britain’s Imperial Century.  Dalziel, Historical Atlas.  The academic literature on European colonialism is rich, and we will note only a small part of it: Baumgart, Imperialism; Bouche, Histoire; Burbank and Cooper, Empires in World History; Porter, Absent-Minded Imperialists; Wesseling, European Colonial Empires; Ginio, French Colonialism Unmasked.  Sas, Book of the Sea, 95 – 105; Basu, Colonial Port Cities; Murphey, “Evolution.”

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Chapter 1: Historical Background

Jewish Nationalism, Zionism, and the Sea Within the approach that attributes great importance to modern nationalism in modern culture, the birth of the Jewish nationalist movement—whose most clear expression is the Zionist movement—served as the transition of the Jewish nation from an ethnic cultural-religious identity, which had characterized it for many generations, to a modern national one.¹⁰ In light of this, the identity of Jews would now be defined in nationalist-secular terms, rather than solely religious ones. This approach replaced the Jews’ traditional theocentric view with a value system that positioned the person and his or her desires at center stage, with the individual’s physical needs—and not only his or her soul and education—treated.¹¹ One of the key conditions for this was, as stated, the desire to disconnect from the Jewish, exilic past and to adopt the image of the “New Jew,” the activist and revolutionary. No longer was the Jew a wilting, powerless Yeshiva student diligently studying Talmud; rather, he was a healthy, anti-exilic youth with athletic prowess.¹² In this spirit, a central component of the preferred “New Jew” image was a transition to power and might, to physical education, and to the cultivation of physical abilities and appearance. In nineteenth-century Europe, physical education and group sports were wielded as a means to foster cooperation and teamwork, a mechanism contributing to the formation of evolving national identity—and this had an important impact on reinforcing national identity.¹³ As we will see in our discussion about maritime sports leagues, research on athletics in the growth and formation of national movements reveals that sport has an important symbolic role in the formation of national identities; it assists in the shaping of consciousness, national identity, and internal coherence.¹⁴ These ideas did not go unnoticed by the fathers of the Zionist movement— led by Herzl and Nordau—and they maintained the same theory with regard to the physical rebirth of the Jewish nation. They fashioned an unmistakable link between the Jewish nation’s national renaissance and the individual’s physical

 Smith, Nation in History; Ben-Israel, “Nation in History.” A number of factors led to the national revival in the second half of the nineteenth century, which in essence wished to find a fitting solution to the question of Jewish existence in the Diaspora. For more, see Avineri, Making of Modern Zionism; Avni and Shimoni, Zionism; Shapira, Reinharz, and Harris, Age of Zionism.  Soreq, Physical Education, 168 – 75; Ben Yisrael, Rule to Practice, 26 – 27.  Shapira, New Jews, 155 – 74.  Nevo, “Sport and Politics,” 196.  Smith and Porter, Sport and National Identity. For more on the connection between sport and the phenomenon of nationalism, see Harif, Zionism of Muscles, 58 – 61.

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rehabilitation; moreover, they perceived body culture as a central tool in shaping the New Jew and as a condition for national rebirth.¹⁵ Herzl, who had been exposed to European culture with its emphasis on the centricity of body culture in the process of forming a national identity, spoke often in praise of athletics.¹⁶ He viewed the ways in which sport and student clubs were organized as a model for advancing the Zionist social-political idea; as a student, he was occupied with fencing and marksmanship. In fact, this is what he wrote to the Zionist Organization of America’s journal: “Friends, brothers, awaken and rise! We are in need of your assistance, not only your enthusiasm, which rises in smoke at your mass meetings and then disappears again. Organize! Establish local groups, association branches of all kinds for the uniting of men and also of women and young women, associations for sport, associations for singing…all under the banner of Zion.”¹⁷ Herzl disliked the weak and sickly exilic body, noting his aversion in his journal on an 1898 trip to the Land of Israel. He described a horseback riding demonstration conducted by the youth of the Rehovot moshava (colony), when tears stood in his eyes seeing the “quick and brave riders”; he recorded the great fulfillment and wonder he felt on seeing the large bodies and flexed muscles of three Jewish porters he met in Jerusalem.¹⁸ Herzl’s righthand man, Max Nordau, a doctor, philosopher, and writer, also linked the bodily rebirth of the Jewish nation to its general national rebirth. In his opinion, the appropriate response for the ills of exile was summarized in the term “muscular Judaism” (Muskeljudentum), which he coined at the Second Zionist Congress in Basel (1898).¹⁹ In his words, “Zionism awakens the Jews to new life…. It acts morally by reviving the wishes of the nation, and bodily by the physical education of the young generation, which will recreate for us the lost muscular Judaism.”²⁰ Herzl and Nordau, then, saw sport and physical activity as a crucial tool in help-

 Gluzman, Zionist Body, 18 – 19.  Sorek, “Herzl’s Contribution,” 2– 5, 31.  The quote is brought in Hebrew in Ram, “Physical Culture,” 169 – 70.  Sorek, “Herzl’s Contribution”; Gluzman, Zionist Body, 20 – 21.  For a summary of the foundations and components of “muscular Judaism” and its meaning and for the different research approaches about the influences on Nordau, see Harif, Zionism of Muscles, 114– 15. One interesting claim is that Nordau’s “muscular Judaism” was in effect an essentially apologetic slogan, and that “the conquest of labor” was actually realized by the members of the Second Aliyah; the term “muscular Judaism” was used to raise the trampled honor of Jews in the nations and as psychological warfare against the disparaging environment surrounding the Jews. See Almog, Nationalism, Zionism, Antisemitism, 208 – 17.  Nordau, Zionist Writings, 117.

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ing shape a national consciousness and fashioning a new physical image for the inferior, exilic Jew.²¹ The emergence of the Zionist movement in Europe in the late nineteenth century took place, as stated, during the period when sea traffic was high and the development of ports was an important element in European life.²² It can even be conjectured that Herzl’s description in Altneuland, the utopian novel in which he prophesied the central role Haifa and its port where he saw ships arriving, was influenced by the reality of ports and shipping at the time: “A magnificent city had been built beside the sapphire blue Mediterranean. The magnificent stone dams showed the harbor for what it was: the safest and most convenient port in the eastern Mediterranean. Craft of every shape and size, flying the flags of all the nations, lay sheltered there.”²³ But aside from Herzl’s dream about the Haifa port, no plan was made in which the Jewish nation could hold on to the sea. In Zionist ideology, which aspired to gather the scattered Jewish nation’s, the sea was used, initially, only as a means of transit. The sea in evolving Zionist ideology was a space to be traversed en route to the promised land, but it did not carry any inherent significance. One of the reasons for this, evidently, was that the sea generally—and shipping in particular—held, for many generations, a peripheral role in Judaism and Jewish history. This resulted from the Jewish physical and mental disengagement from seafaring professions and lifestyles. A more central role was attributed to the few Jewish marine tradesmen, to the growth of port cities, to the development of marine cartography, and even to piracy.²⁴ The relatively peripheral role of the sea throughout the ages was, it appears, also one of the central reasons that the Zionist movement maintained the sea’s purpose as purely one of conveyance, of sailing from European ports to the port of Jaffa or Haifa. The sea was not perceived as a component in nation-building but rather as subject to the land. Time spent sailing was thought of as transitory, its job to bring together those on board in advance of the goal of their journey— their encounter with the physical territory. The “New Jew” and “Jewish work” as

 Soreq, “Physical Culture,” in Kaufman and Harif, Body Culture, 9 – 19; on the link between the Zionist founding fathers and German body culture, see Ram, “Physical Culture,” 165 – 83.  Konvitz, Cities and the Sea; Cesarani and Romain, Jews and Port Cities.  Herzl, Old New Land, 38.  On all of these, see Herbert, “Maritime Tradition”; Finkel, Jewish Pirates; Gertwanger and Zemer, Pirates. A relatively small number of studies has been conducted on the maritime history of Jews. See Patai, Jewish Seafaring; Patai, Children of Noah; Tolkowsky, Jews and the Sea; Tolkowsky, To the Sea. See, also, the most prominent book on Jews and shipping over time: Kashtan, Seafaring.

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the foundational Zionist ethos directed the Jewish worker to work the land; the sea was a nonentity.²⁵ The boundaries of sovereignty extended only to terrestrial space, which, as opposed to the sea, was a real territorial unit, with clear and pronounced land-based boundaries and spaces. This is most noticeable in the meager literature about the sea—as opposed to the abundance of works on the pioneering labor on the soil, on conquering the land and making the desert bloom.²⁶ In fact, research on mass Jewish immigration from the Russian Empire to the lands across the sea in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century notes that sailing to destinations was fraught with apprehension, turbulence, and terror. For most travelers, it was the first time they had left their villages. The encounter with a steamship anchored in a harbor, a massive steel monster arising to great heights, and with the infinite expanses of the sea left passengers greatly overwhelmed and in fear of the unknown.²⁷ Galician-born Jewish-Austrian journalist Joseph Roth articulated Jewish immigrants’ reluctance to sail to the United States. His description supplies a different, psychological-religious explanation for the Jews’ reticence regarding the sea. It was not America, he says, that struck fear in the immigrants’ hearts but rather the sea; Jews had already crossed many wide continents but never water. Roth writes: The Eastern Jew is afraid of ships. He doesn’t trust them. For centuries he has been living in the interior. The steppes, the limitlessness of the flat land, these hold no terrors for him. What frightens him is disorientation. He is accustomed to turning three times a day towards Misrach, the East. It is more than a religious imperative. It is the deeply felt need to know where he is. To know his location. It is easier to find one’s way and to know God’s way from the certainty of a geographical location. He knows more or less which way Palestine lies. At sea, though, he doesn’t know where God lives. He can’t tell where Misrach is.²⁸

 For more, see Almog, Sabra, 160 – 84.  Hever, Longed-for Shore, 13.  Alroey, Quiet Revolution, 184. However, it is important to qualify the statement somewhat; this is true in the main for sailing on the open seas, but transportation on rivers was common until at least the mid-nineteenth century, when the railroads were developed. Merchant Jews traveled often, and descriptions of barges, rivers, and boats appear in Yiddish literature as part of daily life in Jewish villages—although it is possible that the workers involved in it were not Jews. Descriptions of Jews in the other transport professions, such as cart owners, is far more prominent. Sailing on the seas was dangerous until the late modern era, but Jews, as merchants, often sailed and traveled. On maritime trade in the Middle Ages see, for example, Ghosh, Antique Land. In any case, the question of Jews’ relationship with the sea throughout the generations requires a deeper examination, one that is out of the bounds of the current study.  Roth, Wandering Jews, 98.

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Chapter 1: Historical Background

An unusual institutional approach to the sea came from Ze’ev Jabotinsky’s Revisionist movement. The movement viewed the sea as a path to forming an independent Zionist entity, an entity with nationalistic aspirations that were not bound by precise precincts but rather breached boundaries beyond terrestrial borders. This approach was rooted in Jabotinsky’s perspective about the link between the Jewish nation, modern nationalism, and Zionist activity. His perspective did not emphasize the “New Jew”; rather, it stressed the continuity that the Zionist movement’s activities perpetuated, the importance of the Jews’ return to their natural environment, in which their national identity had been formed. In this view, the sea became one of the sovereign assets of the ancient Kingdom of Israel; there was a primal and unending link between the sea, Hebraism, and Jewish history in the Land of Israel.²⁹ As such, the Revisionists felt that the modern return to the land and Zionist sovereignty should not be bounded by terrestrial borders alone; the sea was perceived as a Hebrew sea, not a means to a terrestrial goal but innately possessing a seminal and independent role in the founding of the Zionist enterprise in the promised land. This referred primarily to the land’s western border, where the Mediterranean Sea, its intangible maritime border, lay.³⁰ One practical step to conquering the sea taken by the Revisionist movement was the founding of the Betar Naval Academy in Civitavecchia (a port city near Rome), which was operational between 1934 and 1938. The third chapter of this book contains a detailed account of the subject. Herzl and Nordau’s vision was shortly translated into action, catalyzing the establishment of Jewish sport leagues and gymnastics clubs in the Diaspora and the Land of Israel. The sea had a role in these groups, and league divisions fo-

 According to some Revisionist approaches, between the twelfth and fifth centuries BCE, the Hebrew tribes and the Phoenicians and Canaanites and the Phoenician port cities—foremost Tyre and Sidon—had a shared culture and a certain amount of intermingling. The mention of the Phoenician history in the 1930s was intentional; it cultivated a sea consciousness in the Revisionist movement by presenting a storied history in which the “Hebrews” were one part of a large seafaring superpower. In this view, the image of the Hebrew-Phoenician past made the biblical Israel a nation that took part in the boldest of seafaring activities, providing a historical platform for an ideology that hoped to cultivate Hebrew maritime activity and a modern-age navy. One person who expressed this approach was Nahum Slouschz in his Book of the Seas. For more on this subject see Shavit, “Hebrews and Phoenicians.”  Amit, “Hebrew Conquest”; Jabotinsky, “Hebrew Sea.” Along the lines of “conquest of the wilderness” and “conquest of labor,” which succinctly expressed the Zionist vision of the settlement institutions, it has been argued that Jabotinsky was the person who coined “conquest of the sea.” See Erell, Facing the Sea, 24. For a short summary of the Canaanite sources for Hebrew ties to the sea and their extension in Hebrew maritime ideology—as opposed to socialist ideology, which sanctified the land—see Ohana, Origins of Israeli Mythology, 364– 66.

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cusing on sea sports were founded with a similar goal: to expand and firmly root the desired image of the New Jew in the land. Maritime activity was, then, part of body culture, and in the developing physical activity the muscular man of the sea took his place within “muscular Judaism.” But alongside this, the place of the sea itself in the emerging Zionist movement was not obvious; it was only with the strengthening of Jewish settlement around the country that it became clear that the sea was an essential part of reinforcing settlement in shaping and cultivating new Jewish nationalism in the land.

New Jewish Settlement in the Land of Israel and the Sea As we will see, the Revisionist approach remained peripheral until the mid-thirties, drowned out by the voices of the Zionist leadership, which did not encourage ties to the sea or the development of seafaring professions. However, while the upper and central leadership ignored the sea, a gradual change, from the bottom up, was also evident. This change did not express an ideological shift at first; it began with a handful of Jewish immigrants who left Eastern Europe and chose to settle in the Land of Israel. Yaacov Shavit posits that with the initial settlement of Jews in the land a new perspective began to slowly develop, a movement from the east, from the Land of Israel, to the west, to the sea. From the perspective of the new Jewish settlers in the land, looking west over the local Levantine landscape, the Mediterranean Sea began to be perceived as the Yishuv’s wide open gateway to the developed, Western, European world and the Jewish community that remained there.³¹ There was a slow but gradual transition from viewing the sea as east of the west, an obstacle, to viewing it as west of the east, a bridge. An additional example of the new place the sea held for the settlers was the growing attention paid to its shores as a place of recreation and relaxation, rep-

 Shavit, “Tel Aviv.” For a critique of Shavit’s approach see Ohana, Origins of Israeli Mythology, 351– 57. Almog divines expressions of orientality in the Yishuv that were widespread primarily at the end of the Ottoman period; these faded with the establishment of the British Mandate, and an affinity for European culture rather than Mediterranean culture was emphasized. From that time, the oriental, or Mizraḥi, culture was perceived as inferior and backward in contrast with the European one; Almog, Sabra, 289 – 92. Aviva Halamish points to the dualism of immigrants. On one hand, they may arrive with the sensation that they are coming to a familiar place, a place they imagined, a place they yearned to “return home” to; on the other hand, oftentimes a nostalgia for their homeland, a longing for the place left behind, accompanies that feeling, which naturally results from uprooting oneself from one land to another. See Halamish, “Nostalgia.”

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resenting freedom and pleasure—a location that to a great extent made possible an escape from the routine of everyday life and its hardships. In Tel Aviv, especially, the city’s residents saw the beach as a place for relaxation and popular recreation. The beach was an escape from the city’s crowding and the masses flocked there, especially on Saturdays. During the Second Aliyah, in the city’s first years, walking to the sea was a part of everyday life in Tel Aviv; the beach offered a variety of recreational activities and a hub for socializing that reflected a vital part of the evolving urban culture.³² Tel Aviv’s shores were also an attraction and a prime locus of tourist development for the city. Cafés, hotels, and clubs sprang up along the coast, and in the evenings the boardwalk filled with people. Development along the city’s shore and its transformation to a center of urban culture and recreation were evidently influenced in no small measure by the residents’ familiarity with attractive shoreside cities in Europe such as Odessa and the French Riviera.³³ The peak of activity came, as noted, on Saturdays, when many residents of the city congregated at the seaside. Thus the Saturday bustle constituted not only recreational activity, but also a clear and significant secular statement about the role of the beach as an alternative to the synagogue. The sand on the beaches was a metaphor for a site representing the opposite of sanctity. The Tel Aviv beach became the quintessence of the new, liberated Jewish existence, the one that was allegedly free of the religious Zionist ideology based on national revival and the building of the land. But it was for precisely this reason that the beach became a prominent feature of new Jewish revival and Zionism’s success in “normalizing” Jewish life as the enterprise’s supreme purpose—a new, free, healthy life that was evolving in the Land of Israel and the first Hebrew city.³⁴ The term “Hebrew sea” began to be heard within the Zionist “Hebraizing” of the homeland to which the Jews were returning: there were Hebrew settlements, Hebrew literature, Hebrew education—and now a Hebrew sea. The shared Jewish homeland, meant to concretize the growing Zionist nationalism linked to the renewing Hebrew homeland, underwent an etymological change.³⁵ Moreover, against the backdrop of 1920s’ Europeanization and modernization, ideas about the land’s natural merits began to appear, paving the way for the development of a space of healing and rest, comparable to vacation spots in Europe. Due

 Azaryahu and Golan, “Contested Beachscapes”; Mann, Place in History, 186 – 228; Azaryahu, Tel Aviv, 272– 75.  Cohen-Hattab, Tour the Land, 53 – 61; Helman, Urban Culture, 142– 48.  Azaryahu, Tel Aviv, 277– 79, following Sholem Asch’s “Tel Aviv” [in Hebrew], Yediot Iriyat Tel Aviv 3 – 4, 1936, 117.  Azaryahu, “Hebrew Sea.”

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to its climate, Tel Aviv—and especially its beach—began to be perceived as a preferred spot for development as a place of healing. For residents of the land it could serve as a place of healing in the summers, while for tourists from abroad it could be a place of convalescence in the winter.³⁶ The change in attitude toward the sea and the growing recognition of the importance of the Mediterranean and the land’s lakes, as expressed in the Jewish population, ultimately led to a “top-down” change in the Zionist leadership and the Yishuv leadership’s approach to the sea. The change began in the mid-thirties and was evident in a number of prominent milestones: the decision of the nineteenth Zionist Congress in Lucerne (1935) to establish the Jewish Agency’s Maritime and Fisheries Department;³⁷ the 1936 inauguration of the Tel Aviv port, the first and only Hebrew port, in response to the Arab boycott and Jaffa’s port’s closure to Jewish activity;³⁸ the establishment of fishing villages along the shores and the development of fishing ponds with the backing of the Jewish Agency; the establishment of the nautical school next to the Technion in Haifa in 1938; and the inauguration of Zim, the national shipping company, at the end of the Second World War.³⁹ Later, Jewish clandestine immigration by sea became one of the prominent trademarks of the Yishuv’s opposition to British immigration policy.⁴⁰ This is the source of the book’s central thesis: from the mid-thirties until the establishment of the state, a 180-degree turn took place in the attitude of the central institutions to the sea; seafaring rose on the central leadership’s agenda. A number of factors stood behind the change in approach. First and foremost, the deteriorating situation in Europe and the demographic changes in the Land of Israel—primarily the massive growth in the rate of Jewish immigration, in particular in the days of the Fifth Aliyah (1931– 1939). A rise in nationalistic Jewish-Arab animosity, which in no small measure was a result of mounting Jew-

 Baruch, “Tel Aviv”; Binyamini, Tel Aviv: Riviera, 3; Aaron Binyamini, “Tel Aviv Riviera” [in Hebrew], Haaretz, May 2, 1929, 2; Binyamini, Health Resort.  Zionist Executive, Nineteenth Zionist Congress, 529. Bar-Kochba Meirovitz was elected the first director of the Maritime and Fisheries Department and Dr. Naftali Wydra was the director of the Haifa office. These two figures accompanied the development of Zionist sea culture throughout the British Mandate period. See Herman, Conquering a Route, 55 – 56.  Stern, “Tel-Aviv Port.” On the Tel Aviv port, see the book’s second and third chapters.  The establishment of a Jewish national fleet was one of the most noticeable symbols of independence and statehood in the late British Mandate period on the road to newfound Israeli independence. Zim’s ships were considered a symbol, and those boarding the ships felt that they were already stepping on the Land of Israel. See Gilbert, New Land. For more on Zim, see the fifth chapter in this volume.  Shapira, Haapala.

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ish immigration—particularly in the eruption of rioting in 1936—was another cause for the shift. These factors led the Yishuv’s national institutions to understand that its independence and sovereignty over different parts of the land involved an unquestionable necessity to govern the outlet to the sea and the sea professions. From then on, the institutions acted to coordinate seafaring activities under their auspices and to raise maritime awareness in the Jewish community both at home and abroad. The processes of change and the factors that led to them will be discussed in detail throughout the book.

The Sea in the Land of Israel’s History Ancient History Early sources give accounts of maritime activity along the shores of the Land of Israel; these are confirmed by many archeological finds, including hooks and parts of fishing accessories or boats.⁴¹ Residents of the land living along the seaside and the lakesides fished using methods that saw almost no change over generations.⁴² However, shipping and fishing were not accorded pride of place in the land’s economy despite its long shoreline, apparently due to the limited number of bays that were easy to anchor in and the shifting coastline along the southern Mediterranean, which distanced transport from the shore.⁴³ In contrast with the peripheral role of shipping and fishery in the local economy, prominent milestones during imperial reign in the Mediterranean demonstrate that the Roman Empire was aportend for imperial rule over the Mediterranean Sea. It was the first to grasp that the sea could be used not only as a barrier between warring nations but also as an unobstructed route, leading directly to the heart of enemy land. Rome and the sea’s northern lands—wealthy places rich in precipitation with great populations and plentiful and good ports—overcame the lands on the southern, African, arid shore, which were lacking in population and ports. Within a few generations, Rome had overtaken the entire Mediterranean region and created, for the first and only time in history, political and cultural unity around its shores. The Roman Mediterranean unity continued for five hundred years, from the mid-first century BCE until the early fifth century

 On ancient Hebrew fishing in the Land of Israel see Nun, Ancient Jewish Fishery; Braslavi, Do You Know, 272– 87; Vinogradov, Kinrot Valley, 14, 25 – 28.  Nun, Sea of Kinneret, 175 – 98; Bertram, Lake Tiberias.  Aharoni, Biblical Times, 9 – 10.

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CE. No similar period has existed in the chronicles of the Mediterranean, neither before nor after, and it is no coincidence that it was called Mare Nostrum in Latin (“Our Sea”) or al-Baḥr al-Rūmī, “The Sea of the Romans,” in Arabic.⁴⁴ Muslim conquest had an influence on wide swaths of the Mediterranean shores as well as on commerce and the movement of people between east and west, and, as noted, there are those who have claimed that the Roman Mediterranean unity was terminated as a result of the rise of Islam.⁴⁵ In any event, the coastal cities in the land during the Early Arab Period—many of which were abandoned during Arab rule and evidently destroyed—were restored and refortified with visible effort after the conquest, and a Muslim navy imposed a policy of war and defense from repeated Byzantine attacks on the shores of the land.⁴⁶ Christian Crusades to the Holy Land between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries, taking place primarily on ships leaving from the ports of southern Europe to the eastern shore of the Mediterranean, brought about a renewal of European influence on the land’s shores. This was expressed in particular in Acre, which served as the capital of the Kingdom of Jerusalem in the thirteenth century.⁴⁷ The Mamluk approach between the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries was wholly different. They invested tremendous effort in terms of the land; however, Sultan Baibars chose a scorched earth policy for the shoreline from the very beginning of his occupation, destroying the coastal cities. This was a defensive strategy for the Mamluks, meant to nullify the Crusaders’ military advantage, as they used ships. Ancient coastal cities sank, the shores were neglected, and commercial relations with Europe suffered.⁴⁸ Only under Ottoman rule, over the course of four hundred years, did the coast gradually change its face and lay the groundwork for reviving relations between the land and Europe through the sea.⁴⁹

 Avi-Yonah, “Mediterranean Sea,” in Israel’s History; Keay, Rome.  Shagrir and Ephrat, “Mediterranean”; McCormick, European Economy.  El’ad, “Coastal Cities”; Khalilieh, “Arsuf,” in Roll, Tal and Winter, Encounter; Lev, “Fatimid State,” in Roll, Tal and Winter, Encounter.  Gravois, “Christian Pilgrimage,” in Israel’s History; Arenson, “Crusaders,” in Roll, Tal and Winter, Encounter; Pryor, Geography, Technology.  Ayalon, Mamluks and Naval Power; Drory, “Mamluks’ Rule,” 5 – 6; Amitai, “Conquest of Arsūf.” For a contrasting opinion to the accepted thesis about the Mamluks’ relationship to the sea and the fact that—despite being a cavalry-based society—they did not neglect the sea, they displayed naval knowledge and activity, and even had a naval strategy, see Terdiman, “Mamluk Maritime Policy.” For more on the reciprocity between Islam and the sea, see De Planhol, “Islam and the Sea.”  Cohen, “Ottoman Rule.”

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Napoleon’s campaign, a year before the end of the eighteenth century— though a failure and the cause underlying Napoleon’s return to France—signified a new era in the history of the Western lands’ involvement in Mediterranean waters. The journey stemmed in part from a desire to prevent the British navy, which had besieged French holdings in Egypt, from using the land’s shores. The British navy’s destruction of Napoleon’s signaled Britain’s total naval power from that point on.⁵⁰ The Industrial Revolution took place in the nineteenth century, first in Britain and later in Europe and America. One central element of the revolution was the growing use of automation and steam power, which led among other things to the building of steamships and the resurrection of trade with lands across the seas.⁵¹ The European superpowers’ growing interest in Palestine in the nineteenth century led to the development of international relations, and a growing number of ships were seen on the land’s shores.⁵² Muhammad Ali, ruler of Egypt, developed the Egyptian army’s naval division, and it was of great assistance in the 1831 conquest of the land. However, to the same extent but far greater in intensity, Egypt’s retreat from the land’s coast took place because of naval power, this time due to the joint British-Ottoman-Austrian navy, which stood opposite Muhammad Ali and forced him to withdraw.⁵³ In the nineteenth century, and in particular from the forties onward, the Middle East and Palestine became an important market for inexpensive industrial products made in Britain and Europe as well as an exporter of food products and raw materials.⁵⁴ The growing use of steam led to an increase in ships’ capacity and speed; their safety also gradually improved. In this framework, commercial activity in the Mediterranean Sea—and on its eastern shores in particular —expanded. The sea traffic and the scope of trade on the Mediterranean’s eastern shores, including the shores of Palestine, grew even more with the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869. The technological changes that took place in the nineteenth century in shipping and in ground transport—the use of wagons and trains—had a pronounced effect on the development of Mideastern port cities, whose geographic conditions were well-suited to the new technologies.⁵⁵

     

Gichon, “Napoleon’s Campaign,” 195. Stearns, Industrial Revolution; Weightman, Industrial Revolutionaries. Maoz, Ottoman Reform; Kushner, Palestine; Schölch, Palestine in Transformation. Cvikel, Kahanov, and Goren, “Naval Bombardment.” Issawi, Economic History, 150 – 59; Owen, Middle East, 83 – 99. Karmon, “Mediterranean Ports”; Kark, “Coastal Towns”; Kark, “Transportation.”

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Maritime Activity during the Late Ottoman Period Ports Jaffa and Haifa were the land’s most prominent port cities near the end of the Ottoman era. Demographic figures from the early nineteenth century until the end of Ottoman rule and the onset of British rule confirm that the fastest rate of demographic growth was in Haifa: it grew to twenty times its size, from 1,250 people in 1800 to 24,600 in 1922. While in Jaffa the rate was lower—14.5 times—the absolute growth of the urban population in Jaffa was greater, from 2,750 people in 1800 to a population of 47,700 in 1922. Jaffa was, in fact, the second largest city in Palestine, second only to Jerusalem, and the largest port city on the land’s Mediterranean coast.⁵⁶ Jaffa is one of the world’s oldest cities. Its geographic and geo-strategic location has drawn conquerors to fight for it, to lay it waste, and to rebuild its ruins time and again.⁵⁷ Napoleon’s campaign and his conquest of Jaffa and its port in 1799 led to widespread devastation, but at the beginning of the nineteenth century it quickly recovered. The city was restored and developed, the orchards were rehabilitated, the city wall was rebuilt once more, and the city fortress was fortified. Additional improvements were made during the years of the city’s Turkish governor Muhammad Abu-Nabbut (1807– 1818), who built and fortified the city walls and many of the public buildings.⁵⁸ The Jaffa port’s natural features were suited to small boats and sailboats alone. The basin’s depth was between 1.5 and 2.5 meters, and thus in the nineteenth century larger vessels were required to anchor some 800 to 1,500 meters from the shore and use smaller boats to offload cargo and passengers. As the ships were forced to drop anchor in the open sea, the port could not be active year-round. The situation was especially dire in the winter; on occasion, ships were forced to wait on the open sea for days or to continue to other ports to the north or south; there were even times when they capsized or shattered on the reefs, causing loss to life and property.⁵⁹ Passenger traffic was comprised primarily of pilgrims, but Arab residents also moved between the eastern Mediterranean’s shores. Because steamships could

 Kark, “Coastal Towns,” 326, table 1. At the same time as Jaffa and Haifa grew, there was stagnation and decline in the other two port cities, Acre and Gaza.  Tolkowsky, History of Jaffa.  Avitsur, Rise and Fall, 13 – 14.  For a description of the hardships involved in debarking at the port, especially in stormy seasons, see, for example, Smilanski, City Is Born, 27; Eliav, Imperial Austrian Protection, 313 – 314, 374.

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not enter the port, they anchored at a distance, conducting unloading and loading using small boats and barges. This was dependent on the weather; on particularly stormy days, the port was incapacitated, leading to many cancelled workdays.⁶⁰ Due to reforms after the days of Egyptian rule in Palestine (1831– 1840), Jaffa became a central district (nahiye) and was included in the special unit known as the Mutasarrifate of Jerusalem. Jaffa’s governor was the kaymakam (subdistrict administrator), at times serving as the replacement for the mutasarrif (governor) of Jerusalem (a lower-level pasha) and subject to his rule.⁶¹ During the time period, security on the roads improved and other changes took place. Sea transport had transformed globally as a result of the invention of the steam engine. The gradual substitution of sailing ships with steamships, the establishment of regular shipping companies, the abolishment of internal levies, the connection of Jaffa to Jerusalem using a terrestrial telegraph line (and from there to Damascus, and to Istanbul, and to Europe), and the opening of the Jaffa-Jerusalem road (1867) all greatly increased the importance of foreign trade to the city’s economy and cemented Jaffa’s position in the land from the second half of the nineteenth century. So, for example, in the 1860s, two passenger ships arrived at Jaffa’s port each week, but in the 1880s, as a result of competition between companies, regular lines brought four ships a week to Jaffa’s port, and cargo ships began to appear as well. Crucial changes took place in the number of steamships; the increase in their tonnage was even more pronounced. Gradually, the large European sailing ships disappeared; only tiny sailboats remained, sailing between the Mediterranean’s eastern and southeastern ports.⁶² A marked increase  Karmon, “Marine and Air Transport”; Gelbart, Jews and Seafaring, 83; Ran, “German Immigration,” 35 – 36.  Maoz, “Last Hundred Years,” 269 – 72.  Avitsur, Rise and Fall, 17– 18. Organized data about the passage of cargo in an import/export port in the last decades of the Ottoman Empire (1885 – 1913) show a constant increase in the general flow, with the exception of small dips in one year or another. The role of sailing ships gradually decreased as well, with the steamships’ role and tonnage growing. In 1886 (the first year for which we have organized data), 603 sailboats anchored near Jaffa’s port, with a total tonnage of 21,167 tons; 397 steamships also anchored, with 438,177 tons—a total of 459,344 tons. In 1913, these numbers reached 676 sailboats with 16,166 tons and 665 steamships with a tonnage of 1,160,315 tons—a total of 1,176,481 tons. The total tonnage of the sailing ships was reduced by almost a quarter, while the tonnage of the steamships at the same time grew by more than 250 percent, as did the general traffic at the port. See Avitsur, Rise and Fall, 32– 33 and table 2 in the appendices, as well as Tolkowsky, History of Jaffa, 149, tables 1– 2. In 1913, the value of import reached 1,312,965 Palestine pounds and export reached 745,413 Palestine pounds; that is, a total value of 2,058,378 Palestine pound moved through the port. The export included 1,609,000 citrus crates, with a total monetary value of 297,000 Palestine pounds. The weight

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in the passenger and cargo volume passing through the port and the Jaffa hinterland in the center of Palestine grew—aided by the development of roads in the region and the laying of a railroad from Jaffa to Jerusalem, inaugurated in 1892. The commercial momentum at the port from the 1860s onward laid the groundwork for Jaffa’s transformation to the country’s most important port city toward the end of the Ottoman period. However, throughout the late Ottoman era, there was almost no change in anchoring conditions, the port’s deficient infrastructure, or the inconvenient access to the dock. This was due primarily to the Turks’ opposition to development initiatives for establishing a modern deepwater port through private or commercial European entrepreneurship and to the limited importance of the land to the superpowers at the time.⁶³ Nonetheless, despite its drawbacks, Jaffa served as Palestine’s primary port until the rise of Haifa’s in the early 1930s. Jaffa’s advantage was its convenient location on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean and its Palestinian and southeastern hinterland. In the second half of the nineteenth century, Jaffa’s port also became Jerusalem’s economic and transport center, expanding for reasons political and religious. The advantages of Jaffa’s location, then, outweighed the deficiencies of its port in determining the city’s development.⁶⁴ Jaffa’s increased general population was also reflected in the rising Jewish population. The city’s Jewish community was comprised of fifteen thousand people on the eve of the First World War, and its proportion of the city’s populace was nearly 30 percent, despite the fact that at the beginning of the nineteenth century no Jews had lived in the city at all. ⁶⁵ The Jewish community in Jaffa’s revival took place, it appears, in the 1830s, against the backdrop of Egyptian rule in the land, with its tolerance for non-Muslim minorities and the establishment of the Jaffa port as its link to Egypt. This was, at its inception, a traditional Jewish community, comprised primarily of immigrants from Northern Africa and Sephardic Jews who congregated in Jaffa from the expanses of the Ottoman

of cargo was estimated at about 90,000 tons, with about one quarter of those being export merchandise; Avitsur, Rise and Fall, 166.  On the different plans raised in the late Ottoman period for developing a protected port in Jaffa, see Avitsur, “Initial Plans”; Mirkin and Goren, “Jaffa.”  Kark, Jaffa, 204– 8.  The Jewish link to Jaffa is found in the Bible, with the division of the land to tribal territories. Through the casting of lots, the tribe of Dan was assigned the area “Me-jarkon, and Rakkon, at the border near Joppa” (Josh. 19:46). In the days of King Solomon (1 Kings 5:23; 2 Chron. 2:6) and the Hasmonean period, Jaffa’s Greek population was punished by Judah for the massacre of the city’s Jews, and conquered by Simon, who established the Hasmonean Kingdom’s navy (1 Macc. 14:5). For more, see Ram, Jewish Community in Jaffa, 18n40.

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Empire and Palestine.⁶⁶ Beginning in the First Aliyah (1882– 1903) and through the period of the Second Aliyah (1904 – 1914), a completely different type of Jewish community arose in Jaffa, one that was noticeably Ashkenazi-European and whose settlers sought an atmosphere of modernization and economic entrepreneurship. Toward the end of Ottoman rule, Jaffa became the center of what was known as the “New Yishuv” in the Land of Israel; it contained the leaderships of the new Jewish economic, commercial, social, and cultural institutions established at the time. Jaffa also became a social and cultural center for the Jewish settlements established on the coast, and even absorbed immigrants whose attempts to live in settlements failed.⁶⁷ Nonetheless, despite the Jews’ prominent role in the city’s population, their involvement in work at the Jaffa port near the end of the Ottoman era was negligible. Shipping had been the profession of Jaffa’s Arab residents from time immemorial; it was passed down from father to son. An insular and cohesive group ruled the port with an iron fist, united in fixed rules all its own.⁶⁸ Their efforts from time to time also served the needs of the Ottoman Empire, such as the 1908 closure of the port to Austrian goods when the Austro-Hungarian government annexed Bosnia and Herzegovina, part of the Ottoman kingdom, and Turkey announced a ban on Austria.⁶⁹ Jaffa’s port was lively, and most of the city’s residents were attached to it: there were those who passed through it—those entering or exiting through it, tradespeople, brokers, and staff from foreign ships; there were “conductors” of camels, donkeys, and carts; there were the “port people”—local sailors, longshoremen (who worked loading and unloading within the ships), porters, and

 On the growth of the Jewish community in Jaffa in the late Ottoman period see Kark, Jaffa, 126 – 33, tables with Jaffa’s population estimates; Kark, “Jewish Community”; Ben-Arieh, “Twelve Major Settlements,” 130 – 37; Ram, Jewish Community in Jaffa, 29 – 30.  Kark, Jaffa, 107– 8; Gonen, “Geographical Heartland.”  Descriptions of the welcome at the Jaffa port appear in the memoirs of many people who immigrated at the time, whose first encounter with the land’s residents was with Arab sailors in Jaffa. So, for example, Berl Katznelson describes it as follows: “The bedlam, the noise, the screams, on camels with Arabs, who threw me and my belongings…. This had to be my first encounter with the Land of Israel!” S. Tzemach reports: “We were caught in the arms of the sailors who tossed us hither and yon, throwing us from hand to hand like a ball, until we found ourselves sitting in a boat on a bench with a small rug spread over it; and an Arab—thick-chested, broad-faced, wide-nosed, and wide-mouthed, squeezing his face against us and enjoying it so much…. I was still wondering and worrying, when again I found myself grabbed like a ball in those arms and my legs were standing on the land in Jaffa’s port”; Newman, Eshel, Pomrock, and Raviv, Israel and the Sea, 243 – 44.  Rokach, Jaffa Orange Groves, 16 – 17, 28 – 29.

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fishermen; and there were the authority’s employees—the port’s director and his assistants, the doctor and his staff, the customs officials and officers, the clerks responsible for passport control, police officers, fish tax leavers, and others. Alongside these there were also customs brokers, whose job was to mind imported and exported cargo on behalf of companies, well-versed as they were in the regulations at the port and familiar with the people working there. These people saved the various wholesalers, retailers, and public institutions the trip to Jaffa; the customs brokers took on the responsibility of “internal” treatment of the cargo with the customs officials at the port. Among the first customs brokers at the port was Haim Yisrael Schmerling, a native of Hebron. Schmerling moved to Jaffa in the late 1850s or early 1860s, and it was he, in large part, who originated the position at the port. He was evidently the first Jew to serve at the Jaffa port in the late Ottoman period. His children followed him into the same field, and other Jews worked as customs brokers as well.⁷⁰ Greater Jewish involvement in the Jaffa port was noticeable in the final years of Ottoman rule, but it did not directly affect Jewish involvement in port and sea professions; rather, Jews improved the loading of fruit on ships by establishing the agricultural cooperative “Pardes.” Pardes’s main goal was to improve the compensation that citrus growers received from Jaffa’s Arab fruit merchants. Its establishment was a milestone in the evolution of Jewish citrus growing in the land.⁷¹ The cooperative was established in 1903 in Petah Tikva at the initiative of Shimon Rokach, who was the life-force behind the association and ran it for many years. Rokach moved the association’s offices to the Jaffa port and initiated contact with the British company so that fruit could be delivered without the Arab middlemen, who monopolized the market at the port at the time.⁷² Pardes’s central contribution to Jaffa’s development was the improvement in the delivery methods through the port. A year after its establishment, the association, with a permit from the Jaffa municipality, built a large storage facility on the shore, south of the platform. This warehouse, considered state-of-the-art at the time, caused a minor revolution in the way in which fruit was loaded, because the storage area was nearly larger than all of the storage spaces that had come before combined. A kind of bridge to the sea sloped out of the warehouse, greatly easing the transfer of crates to the boats.⁷³

 Avitsur, Rise and Fall, 116 – 23; Shemer, Schmerlings, 52– 56.  Ever-Hadani, Pardes Association, 29 – 34; Karlinsky, California Dreaming, 193 – 96.  Karlinsky, California Dreaming, 57– 58.  Smilansky, Family, 2:179; Rokach, Jaffa Orange Groves, 22– 23; Ram, Jewish Community in Jaffa, 268.

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The First World War, however, led to a sharp deterioration in commercial shipping and, of course, passenger movement to and from the port. In the war’s early months, thousands of Turkey’s enemy subjects—primarily Russian Jews who did not have time to or interest in becoming Turkish subjects—were deported. International relations ceased, ships stopped arriving at the Jaffa port, and in 1915 it was completely shut down.⁷⁴ Another crucial port city until the early nineteenth century was Gaza—despite the fact that it did not have a substantial port and was not directly on the coast; its city center was approximately a half an hour from the shore, and sandhills with trees and bushes lay between the city and the shore. The city primarily served as a market center for agricultural products from the area and as a way station for people coming from or going to Jaffa, Ramle, Jerusalem, and Hebron; the central road to Egypt also began in Gaza.⁷⁵ Until the mid-nineteenth century, Gaza was a logistic locus for pilgrims from Syria to Mecca; from the second half of the century, with the appearance of trains and steamships, these gradually took the place of the camel convoys and led more pilgrims than there had previously been to the holy cities in the Arabian Peninsula. Gaza’s role in the pilgrimage apparatus and commerce began to shift, and the commercial convoys that arrived in the city began to dwindle. Despite the fact that the second half of the nineteenth century saw an increase in the export of barley from Gaza’s port to breweries in Britain, it was unstable because of the variability—there were years of rain and plenty and arid years—and these ultimately kept the financial institutions and companies from becoming firmly entrenched in the city.⁷⁶ Acre, in the land’s north, was also a crucial port until the nineteenth century. Trade was an important sector in Acre’s economy, and the port stood at its center. The city’s wheat market developed, in particular; wheat was brought from around Palestine and even east of the Jordan and Hauran, and ships leaving the port carried wheat to different capitals and ports in Europe. Acre’s port also exported cotton, tobacco, and some vegetables, and it imported a variety of products including materials from Damascus and Aleppo. In the early nineteenth century Acre was considered a good port, though not for large ships; it was too narrow and shallow. From the mid-nineteenth century, sources note that the port in Acre was gradually deserted, the water was low and it filled

 Avitsur, Rise and Fall, 126 – 29; for a description of the situation in Jaffa between 1914 and 1917 and the struggle of Jaffa’s Jews for existence, see Ram, Jewish Community in Jaffa, 273 – 300.  Ben-Arieh, “Twelve Major Settlements,” 123 – 30.  Halevy, “Drinking (Beer).”

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with sand. Because steamships could not draw near in the shallow water, its importance waned, and Haifa gradually took its place as the land’s northern port city.⁷⁷ Europe’s powers, which deepened their involvement in the weakening Ottoman Empire over the century, positioned their representatives in Haifa, which began to attract wealthy merchant families from other cities in Palestine and even from neighboring countries. The development of Haifa’s port became increasingly tied with its commerce and passenger traffic. From the 1850s, steamships from large shipping companies—such as the Austrian “Lloyd”—arrived at Haifa’s port. The increased activity led to the port’s growth; near the end of the fifties, Czarist Russia expanded it, with the intent that it serve Russian pilgrims, even building the first and only wharf at that time on the Mediterranean’s eastern banks in Haifa.⁷⁸ The wharf was extended and improved in 1886 by a member of the German settlement in the town, engineer Gottleib Schumacher, whose additional plans served as a foundation for the later development work done at the port.⁷⁹ The turning point in the chronicles of the Haifa port came in 1905, with the launch of the Hejaz railway to Haifa. This was meant, first and foremost, to serve the pilgrims to Mecca and Medina, and connected to Haifa from the Daraa station in Transjordan, where the central rail line wended its way to Hejaz.⁸⁰ One year later, export from Haifa’s port surpassed Acre’s export, and the disparity between the two cities continued to grow. From then on, the Haifa port’s hinterland included the land’s northern valleys, Transjordan and the Damascus region, as well as the Jezreel Valley, the Jordan Valley, and Houran, which exported wheat. Similarly, the pilgrims using the Hejaz railway on the way to Mecca passed through the port. The only exit from the long rail line to the Mediterranean (Damascus to Medina, totaling roughly 1,300 kilometers) was in Haifa. The seat of the entire railway’s administration was in Haifa, where there were a number of large workshops; many residents of the land and its neighbors

 Ben-Arieh, “Twelve Major Settlements,” 118, 122; Kark, “Coastal Towns.”  Yazbak, “Haifa,” 313 – 15.  Ben-Artzi, “Development Plans,” 75 – 78.  The establishment of the railway was part of the rapprochement between Turkey and Germany at the time, as they competed with Britain and France over the infiltration to imperial regions. German aid to the Turkish was expressed, inter alia, in the development of a broad network of railways that tied the Ottoman Empire to Europe. The idea of the railroad provoked concern amongst the British, who feared a Turkish-German attack in the direction of the Sinai Peninsula and the canal, with the forces being brought to the area on the Hejaz railway. See Pick, “Pioneer of Railways”; Fine, “British Policy.”

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streamed into Haifa in order to take advantage of the abundance of work offered by the train, with all of the services attached to it. Much of the material necessary for continuing the construction of the central railway also arrived in Haifa from Europe, and a special wharf was built at the port for receiving it. A secondary line from Daraa was laid to Haifa (160 km) for this purpose, and thus Haifa became an export port to Houran, which was rich in wheat crops, and to the other regions to the east and south, providing them with easy access to the Mediterranean.⁸¹ Alex Carmel summarized the state of Haifa on the eve of the First World War, saying that “at the end of four hundred years of Ottoman rule, Haifa’s position as a leading city in northern Palestine was recognized and secure. The number of its residents was larger than twenty thousand, and it was constantly growing. The import and export trade was continually increasing, as was passenger traffic at its port and on its trains.”⁸² With the end of Turkish rule in the land, Haifa had already laid the groundwork upon which the city and its port would be expanded during British rule.

Fishery In contrast with the shifts taking place in the land’s ports at the end of the Ottoman period, the fisheries sector on the land’s shores and in its lakes was not so quick to develop. The land’s residents, living on the coast and near the lakes, fished using methods that had remained the same for generations.⁸³ At Lake Kinneret these included both surf fishing and fishing from the water (netting⁸⁴ or spearfishing) or simple boats and sailboats (using gillnets,⁸⁵ cast nets,

 Carmel, Ottoman Haifa, 121– 31; Karmon, “Road and Railway”; Soffer and Kipnis, Atlas of Haifa, 106; Eshel, Port of Haifa, 9 – 11.  Carmel, “Haifa,” in Naor and Ben-Artzi, Haifa, 2.  Avitsur, Yarkon, 110 – 13; Schmida, “History of Fishing,” 14; Bernstein, “Fish,” 27– 47.  From the inception of fishing at Lake Kinneret until the Arab fishermen left the lake, Yarkon bream were fished using nets (in Arabic, shivqat sardin), with close-knit mesh, created for this purpose by the fishermen. Fishing was conducted in two ways: first, from a boat holding four fishermen, two rowing and two deploying the nets; the person deploying the net would stand on the deck at the stern of the boat, and once he had prepared the net on his right hand, would wave it forcefully in the direction of the fish. The nets would be thrown dozens of times in the course of one night, and in good fishing waters some twenty kilograms of fish could be caught from one deployment. In one season, the nets would catch some 200 – 250 tons of Yarkon bream. The second method was using a net from the shore—the fishermen would place bait made of dough between the rocks close to the shore and after the fish collected

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dragnets,⁸⁶ fishhook arrays,⁸⁷ and traps⁸⁸). On Palestine’s shores there were, of course, people who conducted near-shore fishing, whose season was primarily winter, but the coast did not have anchoring locations and fishing villages did not spring up on its length, as they did, for example, in Greece, Italy, Spain, and other countries located on the water.⁸⁹ Over time, no new anchorages were built, and those that remained from earlier periods—such as the ancient anchorages in Achziv, Acre, Atlit, and Caesarea—remained undeveloped, being used sporadically; the small natural bays, such as those in Atlit, Daar, and Mikhmoret, served as shelter only for small boats.⁹⁰ The central fishing port was in Jaffa, but Jaffa’s market was limited due to the high cost of governmental taxation, which constituted one fifth of the fish’s value. In 1902, there were only

they would suddenly throw their net. See Nun, Sea of Kinneret, 197– 98; Bertram, Lake Tiberias, 9.  The gillnets (known as reshet zimim or reshet ha-amida in Hebrew and zeda in Arabic) caught the fish and held it by its gills; hence its name. The net is built like a barrier, with weights that reach down to the lake’s floor, and buoys that, when more plentiful than the weights, keep the net floating so that it hangs like a wall descending from the top of the water. Fishermen worked with this net primarily at night, so that the fish would not notice the threads, which were made from cotton. The fish reaches the net and its head goes through, but its wider body cannot, and in its efforts to retreat the threads get caught in its gills. Nun, Sea of Kinneret, 180 – 81; Bertram, Lake Tiberias, 10.  The dragnet (in Arabic, jarf) was the largest and most important net in Lake Kinneret. The net is woven in the pattern of a wall, 250 – 400 meters in length, 2.5 meters in height on the ends, and 5 meters of height in the center. Its bottom is tied to a weight and its upper part has a rope with buoys. The dragnet is deployed hundreds of meters from the shore and pulled by ropes on both of its ends to the shore by a team of fifteen to twenty people. The net is dragged primarily at beaches without rocks. See Nun, Sea of Kinneret, 175 – 77, 225; Bertram, Lake Tiberias, 10.  A fishhook array (in Arabic, shrak) is made from a rope one kilometer in length with short threads ending in fishhooks and bait tied at intervals of four to five meters. See Nun, Sea of Kinneret, 181– 82.  These were built in the shape of a cell, and fish would enter and be unable to find their way out. The traps were planted in stream channels and trenches in places in which the fish’s path to the lake could be blocked. Thus the location of the traps was usually in the Jordan estuary or its outlet to the Kinneret. See Nun, Sea of Kinneret, 179 – 80.  On the evolution of types of fishing along the western shore of Palestine and in the Yarkon, which were similar to those on Lake Kinneret, see Wydra, Fishing; Avitsur, Yarkon, 104– 20; Bernstein, “Sea Fishing.”  Schmida, “History of Fishing,” 14. According to Aharoni, shipping and fishing never took a central role in the country’s economy because of a dearth of bays with ease of anchoring; see Aharoni, Biblical Times, 56.

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twenty fishing boats in Jaffa.⁹¹ Bedouins living in the Yarkon marshes near Tel Ephraim (Pardes Katz) and Tel Abu Zeitun were occupied with fishing on the Yarkon. Some fished in tiny, triangle-shaped boats.⁹² Lake Kinneret, too, had limited fishery. Henry Baker Tristram, for example, in his 1864 book, recalls his trip to the Tiberias fish market, and notes that the Arab fishermen worked all night and fished fourteen types of fish, most of which were disposed of, being inedible. He emphasizes that the Kinneret has wonderful schools of fish, but only two boats fish on the entire lake. A common form of fishing was using fish toxins; he describes how an old fisherman threw poisoned breadcrumbs—which affected the fish immediately—into the water.⁹³ Mark Twain, who toured the land in 1867, reports that there were two fishing boats on the lake,⁹⁴ and two years later John MacGregor records three fishing boats on Lake Kinneret. In his opinion, the reason there were not more fishing boats on the lake was the high tax the fishermen paid for the right to fish in the waters of Bethsaida—one hundred Turkish liras per annum.⁹⁵ Laurence Oliphant notes, some fifteen years later, that Tiberias’s Arabs would fish with round nets or long nets that they placed on the water using small fish—which they had fished by spreading poison powder on the water—as bait. Only four boats fished on the water due to the small population that lived on its shores.⁹⁶ In the Hula Valley, Arabs of the Ghawarina tribe were fishermen, knowing as they did that the marshes served as shelter for the fish.⁹⁷ In the Hula Valley and

 Avitsur, Rise and Fall, 90 – 96. Avitsur emphasizes that the lack of development of transportation methods, such as a railroad from Jaffa to Jerusalem before 1892, did not facilitate the transfer of fresh fish from the port cities to the inner areas, and that the number of consumers was also quite small; see Avitsur, Yarkon, 110. Ita Yellin, near the end of the Ottoman period, noted that fresh fish from Jaffa were a very rare commodity in Jerusalem and only a few of the city’s more affluent residents, whose friends in Jaffa could send them fish on an express wagon bound for Jerusalem, were privileged to have them; see Yellin, To My Children, 13.  Avitsur, Banks of the Yarkon, 146 – 49. The Kishon River also had locals working in fishing. The fishermen stood on the banks and cast their nets, assisted by youth on small boats in the middle of the river. Mary Rogers notes that the fish in the Kishon were small but abundant, and very tasty; Rogers, Domestic Life, 186.  Tristram, Land of Israel, 425 – 26.  Twain, Innocents Abroad, 498.  MacGregor, Rob Roy, 357, and note 20, contains a survey of reports of passengers who had visited the lake and the negligible number of boats on it from the beginning of the nineteenth century.  Oliphant, Haifa, 122.  Braslavi, Do You Know, 116, 147. The Hula Lake fish congregated at the outlet of the Milha River during the winter days, because of its warm water, and the fishermen put up barriers

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the Milha spring fishing rights were, by Jiftlik law, the personal property of the Sultan. Fishing rights were granted for predetermined periods for a fixed price paid to the Ottoman rulers, and the fishermen were local Bedouins. Lake fish were sold to various villages; fresh fish from Lake Kinneret were sent to Safed, Nazareth, and other locations in the Galilee, while dried fish were sent to Damascus and Jerusalem.⁹⁸ Aside from Palestine’s Arabs fishing, the nineteenth century also saw no small number of attempts on the part of Jewish fishermen. Amongst the first Jewish fishermen were, evidently, the second group of residents of the Petah Tikva colony (moshava), called “Yarkonim,” who arrived in 1880. They worked for a brief time fishing in the Yarkon, until a fever spread during the summer of that year and they left.⁹⁹ Earlier in the nineteenth century, some of Safed’s Jews had worked in fishery, leasing fishing licenses from the Turkish authorities and employing Arab workers. One of these was Meir Leib Goldzweig, who lived in Safed from the beginning of the nineteenth century. He collected tolls on behalf of the wāli (governor) of Damascus, and entered the fishing business when he saw that there was demand for fish in Jewish Safed. Along with Jacob Dinns— a cheese industry owner in Safed—he held the fishing permit for Lake Kinneret from the Turkish wāli. The two employed Arab fishermen, and no one was able to fish in the Kinneret without their permission.¹⁰⁰ The first fishing group to come from abroad was, it would appear, the one that immigrated in 1912 from the Baku area in the Caucasus region, on the western shores of the Caspian Sea. These were Russian foreigners, who came with the intent of fishing on the land’s shores. However, their request for assistance from the national institutions went unanswered, and they returned to Russia.¹⁰¹ Another group, composed of dozens of Jews from Astrakhan (near the Volga River), arrived in 1913, and its members hoped to make a living from fishery. They initially planned to settle in Jaffa, but found that the conditions in Hadera were better, and began to fish there. The group was devoid of all means, including nets and boats, and its members turned to various institutions in the land

and easily caught many of them. On fishing in Milha with a dragnet, see Shalem, Hula Valley, 102– 3.  Masterman, Studies in Galilee, 37– 39.  Yaari, Petah Tikva. On the “Yarkonim,” see Hashavia, Mother and City, 32– 33; Avitsur, Yarkon, 113 – 20.  Harozen, Land of Jordan, 14– 17. On the partnership between the Jewish Goldzweig family and the Christian Arab Houri family in the fishing rights in Lake Kinneret, see Cohen-Hattab and Loya, “Local Conflict.”  Herbert, “Maritime Tradition,” 70.

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and abroad. This group, too, going unanswered, returned to Astrakhan.¹⁰² With the group’s exodus, Itamar Ben-Avi attacked the Zionist institutions from the pages of the newspaper ha-Or, claiming they had not lent a hand to a group in need. He bemoaned the apathetic attitude and the disconnect from the sea and its treasures, calling for the establishment of fishing villages along the coast and the creation of fishing centers on par with the land’s agricultural villages.¹⁰³ In his opinion, it was a colossal mistake to squander thirty years of revival on the land only, neglecting the sea. Ben-Avi called for targeted action to re-realize the idea, or to “cast bread upon the waters.” He called for the establishment of a maritime association, to invest significant funds in establishing villages along the coast and to ensure equal rights between those tilling the soil and those working at sea.¹⁰⁴ In another article from the same period, he writes: Can it be imagined that, in a beautiful land such as ours, a land of abundant rivers, lakes, and seas, there is no water work, there are no seamen? Can it be imagined that amongst the thousands of Jews living in the Land of Israel there are farmers and tradesmen, and there are workers of all types and there are different craftsmen, there are teachers and there are even layabouts—but not the important sort…not people whose livelihood is the water and the sea large and wide?¹⁰⁵

By the outbreak of the First World War, nothing had been done to realize BenAvi’s vision of developing fishery and the sea in the Jewish Yishuv in the Land of Israel; the absence of organized institutional activity in the maritime realm on the part of the Zionist bodies before the end of the Ottoman period— especially the Palestine Office in Jaffa—is glaring.¹⁰⁶ Despite the world of growing nationalism and evolving Zionist activity that preceded the First World War, the Yishuv had barely begun to consider the sea’s

 Schmida, “History of Fishing,” 13. Archival sources contain no documentation at all of the group’s request for aid.  Itamar Ben-Avi, “Give Us Mariners!” [in Hebrew], ha-Or, December 15, 1912, 1.  Itamar Ben-Avi, “Cast Your Bread upon the Water” [in Hebrew], ha-Or, December 28, 1912, 1– 2. For more on early Jewish fishing during the First and Second Aliyah, see Porat, Fishery Pioneers, 19 – 22.  Ben-Avi, “Give Us Mariners!” [in Hebrew], ha-Or, December 15, 1912, 1. Ben-Avi wrote and lectured about a Hebrew maritime revival in the later years; he even discusses it at length in his memoirs. See Ben-Avi, With the Dawn, 37– 41; 123 – 27; 492– 99.  The Palestine Office in Jaffa, founded in 1908, became one of the most active Zionist institutions in the land in the six years of activity leading up to outbreak of the First World War. No evidence has been found regarding the office’s activities to promote maritime activities in those years. See Shilo, Experiments in Settlement.

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significance to its cause. Herzl’s vision of the “New Jew,” with its inbuilt athleticism, included a maritime component; grassroots efforts and the Revisionist movement had begun to view the sea as an essential component in Zionist rebirth (whether in fishery, recreation, or ports), but a long road lay ahead. As we will see in the upcoming chapter, after the First World War, in the first half of the British reign in the land, new ideas were raised and attempts were even made—especially on the part of private agents who mobilized for action, primarily in the field of fishing. Despite the fact that most of the attempts were shortlived and unrealized, they were the first buds of Jewish maritime activity in the Land of Israel in the Mandate period, and the experience gained was of some amount of help for the founding and expansion of the activity.

Chapter 2: Harbingers of Jewish Maritime Activity in the Land of Israel, 1917 – 1933 During the early years of British rule in Palestine, a number of ideas were raised and attempts made—primarily on the part of private entrepreneurs—to expand the Jewish hold in the land to districts aquatic. These preliminary signs of Jewish involvement in the maritime world first emerged in Jaffa following the First World War with the establishment of the Water Commission. The commission was the first to broach ideas about Jewish involvement in seafaring professions, going so far as to attempt to enlist the Yishuv’s institutions in its efforts. Aside from those ideas raised by the commission, most of which were only realized many years later, more substantive Jewish involvement in seafaring was evident in three central spheres in the first half of the British Mandate period. The first of these was ports and shipping. Jewish presence at Jaffa’s port expanded to some degree; more substantive development was evident in Jewish workers’ involvement in Haifa’s port. Jewish-owned shipping companies were established for the first time in the Land of Israel, and the first Jewish-owned ships appeared in the country’s ports. The second sphere was fishing. Early attempts to gain a hold on the Mediterranean and Lake Kinneret were made by a number of groups of Jewish fishermen in the twenties. The third sphere was mariner organizing and training, expressed in the establishment of an organization of Jewish seamen in the mid-twenties and the first maritime divisions in various sports associations. Initial strides were made in all three spheres in the twenties and early thirties; most were not quite ripe and did not reach full realization. However, as the early harbingers of maritime activity, they were, to a great extent, forerunners to changes that would take place in the Yishuv. Each initiative contributed in some way to the growing efforts to establish Jewish maritime sovereignty on the land’s shores, which would be more fully expressed in the second half of the Mandate period.

New Ideas: The Water Commission in Jaffa, 1919 – 1921 With the end of the First World War, the Water Commission was established in Jaffa. Active for two years, between 1919 and 1921, the commission was the first body to attempt to propose a comprehensive Zionist plan regarding seafaring professions, seeking to institute an independent Zionist maritime culture in https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110633528-004

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the Land of Israel. The initiator and life force behind the commission was Meir Gurvitz, a mathematics and engineering teacher in the Herzliya Gymnasium (high school) in Tel Aviv, who left his post to dedicate his life to reviving Jewish seamanship.¹ Gurvitz worked tirelessly to influence opinion and disseminate his Zionist maritime vision. In memoirs from the time period, he is described as “a fanatic for the conquest of the sea”: “The working conditions were terribly hard, and the institutions had no department, or person, or material on the subject. There was nothing! And here came one person, whose life dream was the conquest of the sea…. Indeed, the man was wild for one thing, the sea, and he wished to infect others with his madness.”² The commission’s recommendations were not implemented at the time, but they are more than mere footnotes in the history of Zionism and the sea. The commission’s recommendations marked a number of targets on the road to Jewish maritime independence in the Land of Israel. The majority of the suggestions were realized in the years that followed, when conditions made it possible. The ideas raised by the commission about cementing Jewish control on the sea during the Mandate period were part of an economic and professional struggle about control over different maritime professions. In the attempt to anchor these struggles in the sectoral and national institutions of  Meir Gurvitz was born in 1888 in Revel (which became Tallinn, the capital of Estonia, in 1919). Between 1909 and 1912, he taught mathematics and physics in Geneva and Paris at the aeronautical institute, where he received a degree as a flight engineer. In 1913, he moved to the Land of Israel, and began work as a mathematics and engineering teacher at the Herzliya Gymnasium. Later that year, he gave a number of public lectures in Jaffa about Jewish aeronautics, making a great impression in the press. During the First World War, with the removal of the Gymnasium’s students from Tel Aviv, Gurvitz was exiled to Haifa with a group of pupils. In 1916, he married Tirza Katinka, sister of Baruch Katinka (see below, note 3). After the war, he abandoned his passion for flight and dedicated his days to reviving Jewish seamanship. In late 1921, he left his teaching post at the Gymnasium and sailed to the United States, thus ending the commission’s activities. In the twenties, he earned a doctorate in the marine field from the University of Washington in Seattle, completing his studies in 1924. Gurvitz dedicated the majority of his time to learning ichthyology (the science of fish) and became, it appears, the first Jew to study marine biology of the Mediterranean fish living in the land’s waters. Upon completing his studies, he returned home, becoming one of the founders of the Zevulun Seafarers’ Association. Gurvitz died in Tel Aviv in 1950. His legacy includes many articles published on the sea and its potential for the development of the country. See, for example, Meir Gurvitz, “Maritime Expanses” [in Hebrew], Yam 8, no. 32, 1948, 9 – 10. On Gurvitz see Ben-Yehuda, Herzliya, 139 – 41; Gavish, Birds, 17– 21; Helpern, Revival, 42– 45; Porat, Fishery Pioneers, 23 – 24. The latter two sources rely primarily on an article in the newspaper Davar that Gurvitz published, in which he described his activities founding the Water Commission; however, the article does contain a number of imprecisions. See Meir Gurvitz, “The Maritime Awakening” [in Hebrew], Davar, May 19, 1937, 8 – 9. For more on the activities of the Water Commission, see Cohen-Hattab, “Water Commission.”  Livneh, Third Aliyah, 114.

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the Yishuv at the time, Gurvitz endeavored to harness a number of the institutions to his cause, with only partial success, as we will soon see. The commission Gurvitz founded at the end of the First World War included engineer Baruch Katinka³ and teacher Alexander (Samuel) Slouschz.⁴ The commission felt that the new era, with the British conquest and the Mandate, was an opportunity to develop Jewish marine sovereignty. It estimated that traffic comprised of pilgrims, researchers, and explorers—which had grown in the late Ottoman period, drawing hundreds and even thousands of Christians, Muslims, and Jews to the land—would not wane after the war; to the contrary, it would increase. The new conditions in the land and Western-British rule would make it easier to visit places that had once been difficult or near impossible to reach. Moreover, with international trade evolving, the commission predicted that marine transport on the Mediterranean Sea would grow for economic reasons. The shift in the land’s political standing with the beginning of British rule, it was believed, would constitute an additional advantage for the land as a national sanctuary for the Jewish nation, which would in the future immigrate to it from around the world. The commission saw great potential in Jewish use of shipping services and felt that the Jewish role in ships’ traffic on the land’s shores should grow and expand. A Jewish fleet, in its opinion, would make it possible to deliver fresh agricultural products to their destinations by sea; the income would contribute to the expansion of the emerging Yishuv’s economy.⁵ These ideas stood at the foundation of the Water Commission established by Gurvitz under the supervision of the Palestine Workers’ Fund (known in Hebrew

 Baruch Katinka (1887– 1965), one of the first engineers in the Land of Israel, was born in Bialystok, Poland, and immigrated in 1908. During the First World War he was the chief engineer on the Hejaz railway, and after the war he was one of the founders of Palestine’s engineers’ union. He was also a founder of Haifa’s Bat Galim neighborhood, built public buildings in the Land of Israel, and built the YMCA building in Jerusalem. He was a member of the board of General Zionists; Shavit, Goldstein, and Be’er, Biographical Dictionary, 435.  Alexander (Samuel) Slouschz-Carmon, born in 1886 in Odessa, was a doctor of natural sciences from 1911 and a teacher at the Hebrew Gymnasium in Jerusalem from 1913. Slouschz was one of the founders of Poale Zion and a delegate at the first assembly of representatives held by Ahdut HaAvoda (Labor Unity). See Merhavia, Jubilee Volume, 145 – 51; Krupnik et al., Lexicon, 282; Ben-Arieh, New Jewish Jerusalem, 120 – 21. His brother, Prof. Nahum Slouschz, was a wellknown writer and researcher of oriental language and one of the founders of the Israel Exploration Society, who wrote and published about the sea as well. See especially Slouschz, Book of the Seas.  M. Gurvitz, “An Open Letter to All Interested Offices of the Zionist Executive” [in Hebrew], Kontres 17, Kislev 5680 (1919), 30 – 32.

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by its acronym, Kapai).⁶ Gurvitz turned to Kapai because he believed that the workers’ movement was his best hope. Kapai did, indeed, respond to his offer, and for a time Avraham Ribotsky managed the commission.⁷ Aside from support from Kapai, which represented the workers’ sector in the Yishuv at the time, Gurvitz also approached the Zionist Commission, which came to the land after the war, requesting national recognition of his commission’s activities. He asked for both financial support and national-institutional recognition of the Water Commission, whose job would be to collect reference material and to accrue practical experience at sea.⁸ In his opinion, all of the commission’s findings and lessons would be transmitted to the national Yishuv institutions in due time, serving as a base for the establishment of a special department for sea affairs in the Zionist movement. For that, the commission needed the agreement, accompaniment, and financial support of the Yishuv institutions.⁹ Gurvitz also released a booklet detailing the commission’s central ideas.¹⁰ Menachem Ussishkin encouraged the commission and supported it in the name of the Zionist Commission. The three-member Water Commission functioned as an independent body, even with the supervision of Kapai and the cooperation of the Zionist Commission; however, it did not receive substantial assistance and most of its ideas remained on paper. In the Zionist Commissions’s archive and the Kapai archive, I have found no reference to Gurvitz’s requests. Why did his requests go unan-

 M. Gurvitz to M. Ussishkin [in Hebrew], 24 November 1919, L3/65 – 1, CZA, Jerusalem. The Palestine Workers’ Fund (Kapai) was founded in 1909 by the Workers’ Party of the Land of Israel. Its mission was to collect donations from Jewish workers abroad for the Land of Israel’s workers. Kapai was active during the years of the Second and Third Aliyah, and in 1925 was transferred to the Histadrut. The appeal to Kapai took place, it appears, as a result of interest that Kapai displayed in developing Jewish shipping on the eve of the First World War. With the mediation of Yitzhak Ben-Zvi, Kapai funded the immigration of two Jewish sailors from Salonica and even arranged for their work contract with the Arab sailors’ union in Jaffa. The initiative was short-lived; with the breakout of the war, both sailors returned to Salonica. See Noy, Fifteen Years, 20, BenZvi, Road Signs, 102– 9.  Helpern, Revival, 43. For more on Avraham Ribotsky, who was primarily occupied with founding the company “Palestine Lighterage and Coastal Navigation” and attempts to purchase the Hehalutz, see note 32 below.  Meir Gurvitz, “The Maritime Awakening” [in Hebrew], Davar, May 19, 1937, 8 – 9; Livneh, Third Aliyah, 114– 15. The Zionist Commission’s expenditure on the Water Commission comprised 0.1 % of its total 1919 – 1920 budget (115 British pounds), and rose to 4.7 % of the total budget in 1920 – 1921 (4,371 British pounds). See Lavsky, Zionist National Policy, 95.  M. Gurvitz to M. Ussishkin [in Hebrew], 24 November 1919, L3/65 – 1, CZA, Jerusalem.  Land of Israel Water Association, Water Culture. For an early version of the proposal, see M. Gurvitz, “Water Work—A Proposal” [in Hebrew] ha-Ezraḥ 1 (1), 1919, 59 – 65.

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swered? It might be surmised that in the Zionist organizations’ complex of needs and considerations at the time the sea was low on the priority list—though a small amount of financial support was given to the commission, and Kapai’s occasional attempts to support it attest to the fact that Gurvitz’s enterprise was not completely overlooked. It is possible that within the deliberations and approach to Gurvitz’s ideas weight was given to the man and his personality; he created a base for wide support and acted in large part as a lone wolf, making the actual picture of the man and his ideas more complex.¹¹ At the foundation of Gurvitz’s approach to the sea stood his determination that “the maritime Land of Israel is far bigger and richer than the terrestrial Land of Israel, and, at a time when we have no hope or desire of spreading north and east to Syria, nor south to Arabia, we have the hope to take our rightful place in the West—at sea” (emphasis in original).¹² He explained that the development of the desired maritime culture could not only relate to one maritime profession, such as the fisheries industry. As in other professions, he believed, modern fishing did not stand alone, divorced from modern shipping; it was dependent on other fields such as boats with engines, refrigeration, and preserving —and these, in turn, were dependent on other technical professions, such as engine or refrigerator mechanics. So, for example, fishing has seasons, and at high season, fish must be refrigerated, or risk losing the advantage of large catches of fish in short periods of time. The commission founded, then, was not the fishing commission or the shipping commission, but rather the Water Commission, em-

 Gurvitz has been described by his Gymnasium students as a teacher with a wide breadth of knowledge, but at times eccentric in his behavior. Student Chaim Reznik (Razili) wrote about him in 1915 or 1916: “Dr. Gurvitz was known among the students as a somewhat strange man. He was a likeable person, with an innocent laugh that never left his face, but he was very childlike. He was known among the students as having the most original customs and ideas…. Today Dr. Gurvitz asked a student to bring him a chair. The student answered that he could not, because he was busy with the class. Dr. Gurvitz liked the answer so much that he called out to him: ‘You are a person! You are a person! You are not a slave! Come, I will shake your hand! You are a man!’” See Ben-Yehuda, Herzliya, 140 – 41. A different student, Uri Kesari, described Gurvitz as follows: “Gurvitz the engineer came to us with a crown of glory askew on his head. It came from Paris, where, it turns out, he completed higher education in aeronautics. I do not know, none of us knows, if he ever took off in an airplane, but we called him ‘pilot.’ He was an unusual man, wearing, always, a black suit, with a jacket zipped to his neck, whereas during the recess he would walk alone back and forth in the yard, and appeared to be murmuring an eternal mysterious monologue”; Ben-Yehuda, Herzliya, 503.  M. Gurvitz to M. Ussishkin [in Hebrew], 24 November 1919, L3/65 – 1, CZA, Jerusalem.

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phasizing the other, no less important, maritime professions necessary for support. Gurvitz felt that the Yishuv’s growth need not be based solely on working the soil, but rather also on maritime agriculture and work; the settlements’ livelihood could come from the water as well—primarily fishing, shipping, and the professions that complemented them.¹³ The potential was not realized, in his opinion, in the early days of British rule. The dearth of fish was evident, and their price was high. Because of the shallow shores of the Mediterranean, fishermen had to venture farther into the open sea in order to fish in larger quantities, but Arab fishermen did not have large motorized boats, and so the market suffered constant shortages of fish. The situation was absurd; the Mediterranean Sea had many fish and yet the markets were near empty and the price was higher than the average price for fish in European cities. Imported preserved fish were also expensive. Moreover, fish was a more attractive option in the early years following the First World War, when there were fewer animals in the land, expressed in a shortage of meat in the markets.¹⁴ In contrast, the amount of fish in the sea grew significantly during the war years because of the closure and the resulting lack of significant fishing activity; even in the years prior to the war, fishing was not conducted using advanced methods and the number of fish increased.¹⁵ However, the state of the fisheries industry—the primary industry on the Land of Israel’s coast in the early British period, as analyzed by the Water Commission—was dire: there was a serious lack of knowledgeable people, new and innovative methods and tools in the field, transport methods suitable for refrigeration, storage space, and fish-breeding ponds; there was no basic data on the movement of fish in the seas and lakes; and many of the fishermen did not work regularly.¹⁶ Gurvitz saw great potential in changing the status quo— bringing in equipment and technology, organizing the fisheries industry, and enhancing it. These would lead, in his opinion, to the development of the industry, to greater amounts of fish on the market, and thus to the lowering of prices, allowing for increased consumption of fish by the local population. The Water Commission felt that the transitional period between the end of the Ottoman rule and the onset of British reign should be exploited to attempt to encourage the Yishuv to enter the fisheries field; Jewish merchants investing in fishing and

 Land of Israel Water Commission, “Tarbut ha-Mayim be-Erets Yiśrael,” 18 December 1919, S30/2575, CZA, Jerusalem.  Land of Israel Water Association, Water Culture, 4– 5.  Land of Israel Water Commission, “Tarbut ha-Mayim be-Erets Yiśrael,” 18 December 1919, S30/2575, CZA, Jerusalem.  Ibid.

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not finding enough Jewish fishery ran the risk of being forced to work with local Arab fishermen. In the absence of sufficient Jewish fishermen, the Arabs would rule the local market. The Water Commission suggested taking the opportunity to act before the new rules were fixed.¹⁷ The primary tenets of Gurvitz’s enterprise were Jewish maritime sovereignty in the Land of Israel and the establishment of a Jewish fleet.¹⁸ The maritime field was in foreign hands, and the Yishuv was at the mercy of Arab sailors. The boats in Jaffa’s port and along the coast were manned by Arabs, who at times caused Jewish immigrants great anguish when transferring them by boat from ship to shore. Even if the Arabs’ aid at Jaffa’s port was vital generally, the commission emphasized the less pleasant aspects of the encounter between the immigrants and the Arabs—the fact that many of the immigrants lost their money and belongings; the fact that some even enjoyed a chilly dip in the sea. The rocky roads in the land led to transit by sea on the coast—from Haifa to Jaffa, for example—and the commission noted that in this case, as well, the immigrants felt great discomfort with the conditions and treatment they received while at sea.¹⁹ Another of the commission’s motivations was most probably economic. The absence of a developed maritime tradition in the evolving Yishuv in the Land of Israel, and its inability to financially harness the sea’s industries, troubled Gurvitz, and was one of the primary factors leading him to attempt to encourage Jewish maritime activity through the commission. Until 1919, most workers in the land were agricultural laborers; a small minority was employed in construc-

 Land of Israel Water Commission, “Tarbut ha-Mayim be-Erets Yiśrael,” 18 December 1919, S30/2575, CZA, Jerusalem; Land of Israel Water Commission, Jaffa, to the Zionist Commission [in Hebrew], 27 February 1920, L3/82– 7, CZA, Jerusalem.  M. Gurvitz, “An Open Letter to All Interested Bureaus of the Zionist Executive” [in Hebrew], Kontres 17, Kislev 5680 (1919), 30 – 32.  Land of Israel Water Assocation, Water Culture, 3 – 4. Reports about a number of boatowners’ treatment of the immigrants coming through Jaffa’s port when Jewish immigration increased can be found in many sources from the time. One of the many examples is brought by Azaria Alon in his autobiography, where he describes his immigration with his family in 1925: “With the dropping of the anchor, boats came out from the port to take the passengers to shore. The process was contracted. Each boatowner had an interest in catching as many passengers as possible, and it all looked like a pirate raid: the Arab sailors boarded the ship on ladders and ropes, and began to catch passengers and cargo and take them down to their boats; they did not care about separating families or packages, and it all—including the passage to the shore between the waves—was frightening. Imagine a mother with three small children in that state!” Alon, Man and Nature, 26 – 27. For additional testimony about the experience of debarking from the ship to the rowboats and the “reception” that awaited the passengers from the boatowners and the porters who wished to take them to the shore, see Alroey, Unpromising Land, 156 – 61.

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tion in the cities, at different crafts, and in administration. Gurvitz’s initiative was concurrent with the first waves of the Third Aliyah (1919 – 1923) after the First World War, when the workers began to work in public works such as paving roads, establishing camps for the British military, and construction within cities. Most immigrants hailed from the Jewish middle class in townships in Eastern Europe, coming from the Jewish Diaspora as simple workers, not professionals. It was in this atmosphere that Gurvitz raised his ideas about maritime professions, affixing it to the idea of manual labor in any craft that could provide livelihood. Moreover, the Water Commission’s reasoning about the Yishuv’s need to establish a hold on the sea appears to contain some of the assumptions about the importance of the sea and maritime trade noted earlier. Gurvitz’s ideas arose against the backdrop of ideological struggles between two central worldviews about the desired social order: the socialist-worker worldview and the capitalist-bourgeois one. Each of these had a different approach to the objectives of Zionist fulfillment.²⁰ Gurvitz was conceptually diverse. He made use of the term “conquering labor at sea” and raised ideas about training worker-fishermen, reflecting a worker ideology; he called for the encouragement of independent trade, expressing a perception of middle-class enterprise; he touted training in maritime occupations, reflecting worldviews of modern professional education; he presented a vision of scientific development, signaling modern schooling and professionalism, identified with Zionist academic circles. Gurvitz’s approach ran the gamut while wars were being waged within the Zionist movement between groups holding differing worldviews—the workers, the Zionist Commission, and the delegation of Poale Zion.

The Water Commission: Activities Early Attempts to Provide Aid to Jewish Fishermen The Water Commission was in contact with a number of groups of Jewish fishermen who began to come to the land at the end of the First World War—some of whose stories we will look at more closely in the next chapter. The commission attempted to settle them in appropriate places along the shore and to help them

 Lissak, “Immigration,” 173 – 88. The establishment of the General Federation of Labor, or Histadrut, at that time (December 1920) was a central milestone in the organizing of a workers’ class in the Land of Israel. On this, see Tzahor, Yishuv Leadership, 127– 92. The contrast between the two approaches would be expressed in the maritime field later as well—for example, with the question of whether to promote shipping companies that were established through private enterprise or to establish a national shipping company. See below, chapter 5.

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as much as possible, but to no avail. One group of fishermen was the group of converts who came from Astrakhan on the Caspian Sea in Russia. In 1919, they began to work in Hadera, but were unsuccessful primarily due to lack of funds. Another group of Americans came from the liberated Jewish Legion; a few were fishermen. They were settled in Atlit and saw some initial success, but were hit by a malaria outbreak and several group members died; ultimately, their attempt failed.²¹

Attempts to Purchase a Ship and Establish a Shipping Company Gurvitz, as noted, attributed great importance to establishing a shipping company, viewing it as a central element in the Yishuv’s quest for maritime sovereignty. The companies were meant to raise funds from the community, and Gurvitz hoped that the public would take part in purchasing stock for the following reasons: (1) In his opinion, the Arab sailors did not mask their intent not to help more Jews debark from the ships arriving in the land. The establishment of Jewish shipping companies would train Jewish workers and free the immigration enterprise from its dependence on Arab boats. (2) He felt that the British government acknowledged that Arab shore service plotted against Jewish immigration; if the Jews did not organize their own port services, the government would have to do so using foreign workers. Gurvitz claimed that if the government were to organize such workers, the Jewish workers’ resurrection of the shores would be delayed by a few more years. (3) In Haifa, Gurvitz felt, there was much evidence of the fact that Arab sailors charged Jews a fee that was higher than—at times, even double—the fee for non-Jews. (4) The Land of Israel’s west coast made it possible to travel between shoreside cities at sea, especially in cases in which parts of the Jewish Yishuv could be disconnected from one another. In his opinion, using Jewish ships could guarantee independent contact with other countries.²²

 Land of Israel Water Commission, Jaffa, to the Zionist Commission [in Hebrew], 27 February 1920, L3/82– 7, CZA, Jerusalem; M. Gurvitz to A. Ruppin [in Hebrew], 28 July 1920, S30/2575, CZA, Jerusalem. On other groups of Jewish fishermen in the Land of Israel in the twenties, see below in this chapter.  M. Gurvitz to M. Ussishkin [in Hebrew], 30 March 1920, S30/2575, CZA, Jerusalem. Gurvitz was prophetic, claiming that the Yishuv needed a shipping company because “who knows if we will not need even the transfer of food and weapons.” In contrast, no evidence has been found to corroborate Gurvitz’s claims that the British government had admitted that Arab sailors plotted against Jewish immigration or that he had much evidence that Arab sailors took double from Jews.

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It was “thanks to the commission and its aid,” in Gurvitz’s words, that the government approved the establishment of the Pioneer Motor Boat Co. in late 1919.²³ Its ship, Hehalutz (the Pioneer), was, it appears, the first ship whose purchase was attempted using funds from a sectoral institute in the Yishuv at the time—Kapai funds—which would make it institutionally owned by the Palestine Workers’ Fund. It was also most probably the first ship operating as a Jewish shipping line to bring passengers and cargo between the eastern Mediterranean’s ports.²⁴ The ship’s chronicles began in private initiative after the First World War, when the “roads were rocky, the railroad did not run, and the conveyance of merchandise and agricultural products from Jaffa to Haifa came at great expense.”²⁵ Three Jewish partners from Tel Aviv—Avraham Lifshitz, Moshe Ben-Zion Sapir, and Levi Borstein—purchased an Arab sailing ship, made it a thirty-horsepower motor vessel, and installed two passenger cabins on board.²⁶ Engineer Baruch Katinka installed the large engine of a military truck; Borstein was the architectural consultant and arranged the ship’s cabins.²⁷ Under the headline “Private Jewish Ship,” Haaretz newspaper wrote in late 1919: “The small, one-hundredton ship of Mr. Lifshitz and Co. has arrived at our shores. The ship moves between Jaffa and Alexandria and serves passengers and cargo.”²⁸ The investors’ original plan was a private enterprise preparing the ship and operating it as a commercial vessel for all intents and purposes. But the Water Commission asked to purchase the Hehalutz from its owners, or at least to purchase 51 percent of the company. At the close of negotiations, a temporary agree-

 M. Gurvitz to M. Ussishkin [in Hebrew], 24 November 1919, L3/65 – 1, CZA, Jerusalem.  M. Gurvitz to the Zionist Organization’s Department of Trade and Industry [in Hebrew], London, 14 November 1919, S8/1156, CZA, Jerusalem; Kauly, “Halutz.” The suggestion of establishing a company occupied with shipping on the shores was discussed before the Poale Zion delegation from abroad that stayed in the Land of Israel between January and May 1920 as well. The delegation held visits, read professional literature, and formulated plans while critically evaluating the situation in the Land of Israel at the time. Golan, Poale-Zion Commission, 94– 110.  Katinka, Then and Now, 247. The story of Hehalutz appears in some memoirs from the time. See, for example, Rokach, Jaffa Orange Groves, 156 – 59.  The three entrepreneurs of the first Jewish ship were from the Second Aliyah: Avraham Lifshitz (1871– 1938), born in Russia, immigrated in 1911, worked in commerce, and built, among other things, the first three-story building in Tel Aviv. He was responsible for the Hehalutz project. Moshe Ben-Zion Sapir (1893 – 1955) immigrated at age thirteen (in 1906) and after the First World War founded Masa, the first truck delivery company in Palestine, serving as a partner. Levi Borstein (1876 – 1958) immigrated in 1914 and worked in milk distribution. He managed a dairy restaurant, Tnuva, one of the first in Tel Aviv, and was one of the owners of a newspaper kiosk— called Peles—in the Central Bus Station in Tel Aviv. Kauly, “Halutz,” 4.  Katinka, Then and Now, 247.  “Private Jewish Ship” [in Hebrew], Haaretz, December 17, 1919, 3.

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ment was signed in which the company’s owners agreed to include three to four crew members on the boat based on the Water Commission’s recommendation. In return, the Water Commission would, according to the agreement, take part in its expenses and income. However, the Water Commission had no money of its own to buy the Hehalutz; its directors turned to Kapai for financial support. Kapai accepted the offer and established Palestine Lighterage and Coastal Navigation Co. Ltd., signing a contract with the three partners.²⁹ The Water Commission printed shares for sale in the Land of Israel and the United States. Gurvitz spoke before the members of the Jewish Legion at the Sarafand base, and they purchased one hundred shares. Gurvitz transferred the funds to Kapai for the purchase of the Hehalutz. ³⁰ However, the money collected by the Water Commission for the purchase of the Hehalutz was insufficient; it was absorbed by Kapai, never reaching its destination. Kapai’s efforts to attain aid from Zionist national institutes for the purchase of the Hehalutz were also doomed to failure.³¹ The Hehalutz was ultimately not purchased; it remained in the hands of its private owners.³² The Palestine Lighterage and Coastal Navigation Company’s bylaws note that it has three central goals: founding a regular shipping route for cargo and  The company’s establishment was approved by the British and the Occupied Enemy Territory Administration (South) on May 8, 1920; Contract between Avraham Lifshitz, Levi Borstein, and Ben-Zion Sapir, on one hand, and Avraham Ribotsky of the Palestine Lighterage and Coastal Navigation Company [in Hebrew], 25 May 1920, Lighterage and Coastal Navigation Co. Ltd., IV-52-1, The Pinhas Lavon Institute for Labour Movement Research (hereafter: LI), Tel Aviv.  Meir Gurvitz, “The Maritime Awakening” [in Hebrew], Davar, May 19, 1937, 8 – 9. One theory is that after Gurvitz met with the Jewish Legion, they were inspired; some may even have decided to establish the fishing group mentioned above after their release. See Porat, Fishery Pioneers, 25. For an example of a deed issued by the company, see Lighterage and Coastal Navigation Co. Ltd. [in Hebrew], IV-52-2, LI, Tel Aviv.  Kapai requested financial support from Keren Hayesod for the purchase of the ship, but was denied; Ribotsky letter to Kapai management [in Hebrew], 10 August 1921, IV-52-1, LI, Tel Aviv.  Kapai agreed to the Water Commission’s request to support the maritime efforts, appointing a person to manage the association’s doings under its auspices. This was Avraham Ribotsky, former Jewish minister in the Ukrainian government. In the mid-twenties, it was noted that in the Lighterage and Coastal Navigation Co. Ltd., “the organization is nearly complete, shares have even been printed already, and we are energetically preparing for sale. Ribotsky is conducting negotiations regarding purchasing inventory in Egypt”; M. Gurvitz to A. Ruppin [in Hebrew], 1 July 1920, S30/2575, CZA, Jerusalem. In his book, Helpern claims that Ribotsky even took upon himself a trip to the United States to sell the Lighterage and Coastal Navigation Company’s shares. Roughly two thousand shares were given to him, but he disappeared. He did not return to the Land of Israel, and no payment for the shares ever arrived; Helpern, Revival, 42– 45, 332– 34. For the annulment of the contract between Ribotsky and the three partners, see Ruling, Jaffa [in Hebrew], 2 October 1920, Lighterage and Coastal Navigation Co. Ltd., IV-52-2, LI, Tel Aviv.

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passengers between Palestine’s shores and those of neighboring countries—Beirut to the north and Alexandria to the south; disembarking passengers and cargo to the shore from the large ships and the reverse; and operating continuous shore services between ports on the land’s western shoreline.³³ Clearly, attaining these goals would be a boon in the quest for Jewish maritime independence on the Land of Israel’s coast. The Hehalutz conducted a number of trips between the land’s shores and those of Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, and Cyprus. It loaded cargo and took passengers, who took places on the deck or in the large cabin the ship had been outfitted with, and, despite the fact that it reverted to its original private owners, performed some acts that were decidedly national in nature. The ship’s crew, apparently, helped immigrants come to the land’s shores at times.³⁴ When the Hehalutz was in Cyprus the ship’s crew visited a PICA (Palestine Jewish Colonization Association) colony on the island as representatives of the Yishuv, reinforcing the bond between the Jewish communities. The Hehalutz also participated in the rescue of Christian refugees from the Muslim pogrom in Tyre and Sidon, transferring dozens of Christian families from Lebanon to safe shores.³⁵ But the days of the Hehalutz were numbered: the Arab sailing ship that had been renamed Hehalutz was not suited to its mission. The engine that had been installed was a land motor, and fairly well-worn. The ship’s construction was shoddy; water was constantly taken on, and the crew was forced to handpump the water day and night. It goes without saying that a trip aboard the Hehalutz was dangerous. Finally, in one of the perilous storms of 1921, the Hehalutz was separated from its anchor and shattered on the rocks at Jaffa. All of the crew members aboard were saved, but it was the end of the first Jewish ship—and the end of the Palestine Lighterage and Coastal Navigation Company.³⁶ The commis-

 L. Y. Bouls, Major General, Director of Field Operations in Occupied Enemy Territory (South), Bylaws of Palestine Lighterage and Coastal Navigation Co. Ltd., 8 May 1920, Palestine Lighterage and Coastal Navigation Co. Ltd., 1, IV-52-3, LI, Tel Aviv.  Eyewitness report from Sara Kauly, daughter of Levi Borstein; Kauly, “Halutz,” 5.  Helpern, Revival, 334.  Ibid. A slightly different description is given in the story of the maiden voyage on the route from Jaffa to Port Said, with a load of oranges and a few passengers, when the ship was caught up in a violent storm, which moved the captain to abandon ship and attempt to return to Jaffa. The engine failed entirely, and once the passengers and crew had been picked up by a British ship anchored outside of the Jaffa port, the wind pushed the Hehalutz into Andromeda’s Rock at the opening to the port, where it was destroyed; Tolkowsky, Jews and the Sea, 168. Kauly notes February 22, 1921 as the date when the Hehalutz ran aground and capsized between the rocks on Jaffa’s coast, but the literature about early Jewish seafaring gives a number of other dates. For

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sion’s efforts to found shipping companies and purchase ships were, then, premature. Closer to the end of the twenties, efforts to establish a shipping company would reappear; private shipping companies would be launched and be active in the thirties; and a national shipping company would be delayed for many years until Zim Israel Navigation Co. Ltd. was finally founded in 1945 under circumstances that will be detailed in the book’s fifth chapter.³⁷

A Proposal for Marine Research in the Land of Israel An additional crucial element in the development of a Zionist seafaring culture was, in Gurvitz’s opinion, the field of marine research and contact with international academic bodies.³⁸ In mid-1920, Gurvitz appealed to the Zionist Commission about the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES), which sat in Copenhagen. This council had been founded as a result of Mediterranean countries’ increasing recognition of the necessity of Mediterranean Sea research on a wide variety of subjects: physical, biological, climatological, and applied biological—that is, fishing—in particular. The council was headed by Prince Albert I of Monaco, and it was slated to convene in Madrid in late 1920.³⁹ Each country was responsible for its own shores, but the eastern and southeastern coast of the Mediterranean—Palestine—was not under anyone’s purview. The member states in the international council were Spain, France, Italy, Greece, Turkey, Egypt, Tunisia, Bulgaria, and Romania. Each state contributed 5,000 francs to the annual general expenses. The participating states were meant to cooperate primarily on research on the members’ coasts, but they were also able to work on their maritime projects independently, as long as they notified the central office and followed orders about methods and devices in fishery and other maritime professions whose use had been agreed upon. These were determined in agreements made in the special committees established for that purpose; they applied to all members. Gurvitz purported to represent the Jews of Palestine on the council, and appealed to the international council in the name of the Water Commission, especially when he discovered that Italy was showing an interest in fishing on the land’s shores. He saw fit to inform the

other versions of the conditions surrounding the Hehalutz’s demise, see Hayam, Ships’ Tales, 44– 45; Herman, Conquering a Route, 49 – 50; Helpern, Revival, 42– 45, 332– 34.  Yarkoni, The Sea, 221.  Land of Israel Water Commission, “Tarbut ha-Mayim be-Erets Yiśrael,” 18 December 1919, S30/2575, CZA, Jerusalem.  Albert I, the prince of Monaco, also founded the Oceanographic Institute in Monaco in 1906; Golan, Poale-Zion Commission, 96.

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council of the existence of the Land of Israel Water Commission and the fact that Jews were already conducting scientific research on the country’s coast.⁴⁰ Gurvitz and the Water Commission he headed saw membership in the international council as a crucial interest in grounding the Yishuv’s status in the maritime world. Moreover, there was political significance to the Yishuv being the recognized academic authority for research on Palestine’s shores.⁴¹ But the enterprise never really stood a chance of succeeding. It can be surmised that even had the large sum necessary for membership in the international council been available, the European countries would have rejected the request from a commission that did not represent a sovereign state and that purported to represent only Palestine’s Jewish population. Gurvitz was in contact with Colonel Sawyer of the Mandate’s Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries, and submitted reports to him regarding the state of fishery in Palestine. The Water Commission requested that a special unit for fishery be opened, and Sawyer indeed saw to it.⁴² Sawyer transferred to work at the University of Washington in Seattle, where he connected Gurvitz with Dr. Walter Steinitz, a hydrobiology expert and research colleague.⁴³ In 1921, Gurvitz travelled to the College of Fisheries in Seattle and to the Oceanagraphic Institute in Monaco to learn more closely about the sea and about innovations taking place in the field at the time. Due to this trip, it appears, the Water Commission he headed ceased its activities. In 1924, after three years of study, Gurvitz returned to the Land of Israel, and Steinitz joined him as an immigrant.⁴⁴ Within

 M. Gurvitz to A. Ruppin [in Hebrew], 16 May 1920, L3/65 – 1, CZA, Jerusalem.  M. Gurvitz to M. Ussishkin [in Hebrew], 3 May 1920, L3/65 – 1, CZA, Jerusalem.  On British policy and legislation regarding fishing and on the Ministry for Agriculture and Fisheries during the Mandate Period, see Cohen-Hattab and Loya, “Local Conflict,” 95 – 99.  Walter Steinitz (1882– 1963) was considered a pioneer in fisheries research in the Land of Israel. He was a professor of hydrobiology at the University of Breslau and proposed the erection of a marine experimentation station in the Land of Israel, which would be connected to marine research stations on the western shores of the Mediterranean Sea, centered in Monaco. He visited the Land of Israel at the initiative of Prof. Albert Einstein and Dr. Leo Baeck, spent a number of years in Seattle in the twenties, where he worked with Gurvitz, and in 1927 published a comprehensive study on the marine flora of the Land of Israel. At his behest, the Mandate’s Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries laid the groundwork for marine research in the Land of Israel in 1939, establishing a fisheries research center in at Acre port. He later moved to Jerusalem, where he served as a professor at the Hebrew University. Golan, Poale-Zion Commission, 96; Porat, Fishery Pioneers, 261– 69.  A. Levitt (last name unclear) to A. Ruppin [in Hebrew], 14 March 1921, S30/2575, CZA, Jerusalem. Meir Gurvitz, “The Maritime Awakening” [in Hebrew], Davar, May 19, 1937, 8 – 9. Porat adds that in 1924, after Steinitz’s move, an attempt was made to establish a marine experimentation station; Porat, Fishery Pioneers, 32.

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the Water Commission’s efforts to incorporate popular knowledge in marine research, Gurvitz—with Captain Arie Bayevsky—organized a permanent exhibition of Mediterranean fish.⁴⁵ This was the first collection of ichthyology from the Land of Israel’s shores, and it was displayed at the offices of the Water Commission in Tel Aviv.⁴⁶ The Maritime Museum was founded in Haifa in 1946, after the Second World War.⁴⁷

Proposal to Found a Sea Farm in Tantura Another central idea raised by the Water Commission for promoting national Jewish seafaring was the founding of a national sea farm for maritime training at Tantura beach, near Atlit.⁴⁸ Much like the educational agricultural farm in Sejara in the lower Galilee, founded in the early twentieth century, in which workers were trained to work the soil, this farm would train workers in maritime professions, serving as an example for the colonies (moshavot) on the shores of the sea and river. Gurvitz felt that professional training should not suffice with academic learning; practical education was key, and it could be garnered through life and work at sea on the sea farm. The farm’s training for work at sea would be based on the most modern methods and equipment developed for seafaring professions.⁴⁹ Aside from that, students would also work internally—in cooking, guarding, and cleaning—so that they would be able to run a household in the future. Next to the sea farm there would be a farm in which they would produce necessities, preparing vegetables for preserves, or learning  Arie Bayevsky (1889 – 1942) was a convert whose Christian name was Galiav Alexevitz Bakaliavsky. Born in Helsinki, he grew up on the Crimean Peninsula, completed military school and naval academy in St. Petersburg, and was accredited as a captain in the Russian navy. In the First World War, he took part in naval battles in the Baltic Sea. With the end of the war he defected to Turkey, became enchanted by the Zionist dream, and immigrated to the Land of Israel in 1918, joining the Labor Brigade with Crimean pioneers. From that time he was a part of nearly every idea in the maritime enterprise in the Land of Israel in the twenties and thirties: he submitted plans for establishing fishing villages, building ports, and establishing a seamen’s association; he served on the deck of the Hehalutz, fished on Lake Kinneret, was one of the founders of the Zevulun association, and ultimately was deputy commander of the training ship Sarah I at the naval academy in Civitavecchia, Italy, which will be discussed in greater detail in the next chapter. Yarkoni, The Sea, 46; Helpern, “Bayevsky,” 52– 54.  Based on the testimony of Gurvitz himself. I found no other evidence of a commission office in Tel Aviv. Meir Gurvitz, “The Maritime Awakening” [in Hebrew], Davar, May 19, 1937, 8 – 9.  Y. Zeva, “The Maritime Museum in Haifa, Founded by the Palestine Maritime League” [in Hebrew], Yam, October–November 1946, 15 – 17.  Aharonson, First Moshavot, 216 – 21.  Land of Israel Water Association, Water Culture, 9 – 17.

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to use fish residues and sea grass for agricultural fertilizer. During their stay at the farm, students would learn other sea professions: preparing perserves—salting, smoking, and freezing; processing fish eggs; breeding and raising fish in ponds; building, maintaining, and repairing boats; weaving nets; using marine fertilizer; and more.⁵⁰ Each farm member would be given a small patch of land (less then five dunams) on which to raise vegetables, animals, and chickens and, if possible, even to bake bread. The cooperative store would supply basic necessities in terms of work tools, and a central trade company would take care of selling the fish and preserves to an internal and external market for the expanding water industry.⁵¹ The farm, it was decided, must function without support, as a closed system. Its goal would not be profit but rather the education of youth in the various seafaring professions. First, each worker would experience each of the professions on the farm; afterwards, he would specialize in one occupation as per his talents.⁵² It was suggested that the first stage would involve sixty individuals—all with a knowledge of Hebrew and math at public school level, physically and mentally healthy, and wishing to specialize in maritime work. Priority would be given to those who had experience in seagoing work and to children of fishermen, or, at the very least, farmers who had worked near the beach and were accustomed to it.⁵³ The farm would have two main groups: “the apprentices”—those learning— and the “organizers”—the teachers.⁵⁴ The organizing group would consist of eight teachers and foremen, specialists in their fields: (1) a general manager, supervising the entire farm and its trade; (2) a biologist, teaching the nature of fish, raising fish in artificial ponds, breeding, and the arrangement of aquariums; (3) a fisherman specializing in water crafts, including various fishing methods, the vessels necessary, weaving nets, and using sails; (4) an engineer for building and repairing motorized boats and the necessary pumps; (5) the director of agriculture on the farm, specializing in work in the field, garden, cowshed, chicken coop, and fish fertilizer; (6) a pickler, salter, and smoker of fish; (7) a carpenter for boats and oars; and (8) a craftsman specializing in the seashell industry. The eight teachers and managers would be joined by secondary assistant teach-

 Land of Israel Water Commission, “Tarbut ha-Mayim be-Erets Yiśrael,” 18 December 1919, S30/2575, CZA, Jerusalem.  Land of Israel Water Association, Water Culture, 12– 13.  Land of Israel Water Commission, “Tarbut ha-Mayim be-Erets Yiśrael,” 18 December 1919, S30 – 2575, CZA, Jerusalem.  M. Gurvitz to M. Ussishkin [in Hebrew], 24 November 1919, L3/65 – 1, CZA, Jerusalem.  Land of Israel Water Association, Water Culture, 11.

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ers, workers, an accountant, a paramedic/pharmacist, other agricultural workers who would be responsible for the distribution of the farm’s products from the gardens and dairy, and temporary workers when necessary.⁵⁵ Regarding the teachers, Gurvitz’s commission noted that despite the fact that there was a dearth of qualified experts for managing and teaching in the Land of Israel, efforts could be made to find professionals and send them abroad for further training.⁵⁶ A calculation conducted by the Water Commission found that the income would quickly cover the projected expenses: according to the figures, the necessary amount for founding the farm was 15,000 Egyptian pounds, and the monthly expenses for craftsmen, students, and workers would be approximately 1,000 pounds. After the farm and fishing were active, the apprentice expenses would be reduced. However, the expectation was that the income from the farm would exist from the very beginning—brought in from transporting people and cargo in boats, from selling live fish, from selling pickled fish and preserves, from selling handmade products (nets, seashell products), from building and repairing boats, and from selling residual dairy products and marine fertilizer. The most appropriate location for establishing such a farm, the commission members believed, was in the abandoned Tantura, which contained the large empty buildings of a failed bottle factory that Baron Rothschild had attempted to establish (known as the Mazgega). The location’s advantage was in its seat on the Mediterranean coast, with the Tulkarm–Haifa railroad line passing nearby (Tantura Station), close to Zichron Yaakov and the city of Haifa, in which the British planned to build the land’s large port. Moreover, the abandoned houses and cellars of the bottle company could be used for the farm. The place itself was characterized by small, natural, quiet bays for fishing and boats, and a few hundred dunams of land could be used for auxiliary farming and protecting the farm.⁵⁷

 Ibid., 11– 12.  Training the Land of Israel’s professionals abroad in their fields was, in the opinion of the commission’s members, preferable to the alternative—bringing experts from abroad to teach the different subjects. This was a new and fundamental approach that the commission tried to promote, and it touched on the question of expertise in building the land in general and the sea in particular.  Land of Israel Water Association, Water Culture, 10 – 11; M. Gurvitz to the Zionist Organization’s Department of Trade and Industry [in Hebrew], London, 14 November 1919, S8/1156, CZA, Jerusalem; Land of Israel Water Commission, “Tarbut ha-Mayim be-Erets Yiśrael,” 18 December 1919, S30/2575, CZA, Jerusalem.

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The farm’s primary objective was that after three years of preparation for life, the workers would leave and found new, modern colonies on the land’s shores. They would receive boats, homes, and a plot of land along the coast as well as a loan with good terms, so that they could establish cooperative fishing colonies with fishing ponds and cooperative stores, standing on their own on the shores of the sea and rivers. New apprentices would then be accepted to the farm.⁵⁸ The farm would maintain contact with its graduates and ensure, working with the appropriate institutions, their settlement on the shores of the land, later helping them receive their plot of land, home, and tools in installments. Graduates and maritime workers would visit the farm on occasion in order to learn more about the newest innovations. The farm would send experts to check on the farms of the different maritime workers occasionally, guiding them with instruction and advice.⁵⁹ The Water Commission approached Baron Rothschild for funding for the initial work draining the swamp and repairing the buildings. With his assent, a delegation under the auspices of the commission went to the location and created a detailed plan for establishing the farm.⁶⁰ The delegation included Akiva Ettinger, head of the agriculture office in the Zionist Executive, David Bloch-Blumenfeld of Ahdut Ha’avoda, and Gurvitz. It presented the Jewish Colonization Association with a number of requests: (1) draining Tantura’s swamps; (2) repairing buildings which had, decades earlier, been meant for the glass factory; (3) receiving land that was close to the farm and in suitable territory; and (4) securing the Baron Rothschild’s participation in a considerable part of budget. Based on the Baron’s guarantee, Ettinger and Blumenfeld, on behalf of the bodies they represented, also promised to take on a proportion of the budget for arranging the place and establishing the farm.⁶¹ Rothschild approved the Water Commission’s proposal that he give it the land and the buildings as a sea farm, also agreeing to drain the swamps bordering on Tantura, to repair the buildings, and to partially fund the setup of the farm. His agreements came, it appears, from the fact that he believed the plan

 Land of Israel Water Association, Water Culture, 16 – 17.  Land of Israel Water Commission, “Tarbut ha-Mayim be-Erets Yiśrael,” 18 December 1919, S30/2575, CZA, Jerusalem.  James Rothschild gave the Water Commission the franchise for Tantura Beach in October 1919, granting it buildings and two hundred dunams of land for the fishing village. The Water Commission began organizing groups of fishermen from the foreigners who had come from Astrakhan in 1919. Golan, Poele-Zion, 94– 95.  M. Gurvitz to M. Ussishkin [in Hebrew], 24 November 1919, L3/65 – 1, CZA, Jerusalem.

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would facilitate the construction of a port in Tantura.⁶² The establishment of the sea farm was also meant, in the opinion of the Water Commission, to facilitate the establishment of branches of marine work, under the supervision of the experts from the central farm: on the Migdal beach next to Gaza, for fishing; next to the Jordan estuary on Lake Kinneret’s beach for fishing and artificial fish breeding ponds for raising saltwater fish; and around Jerusalem, in Solomon’s Pools, next to the Far’a spring, and perhaps even in the small ponds inside the city.⁶³ But, much like other proposals raised by the Water Commission, lack of funds ultimately doomed the plan. The primary difficulty was in funding equipment for operating the farm: Baron Rothschild agreed to donate the land and the buildings for the farm on condition that the Zionist Executive take responsibility for the purchase of equipment. Ettinger indeed announced that the Zionist Executive would not stand idly by; he pledged that it would take part in creating the national sea farm in Tantura—but he could not secure the Zionist Commission’s agreement, and the Zionist Executive was not inclined to approve the funding of new enterprises in the Land of Israel without the Zionist Commission’s approval.⁶⁴ However, the commission’s plans and ideas for establishing fishing villages were realized in part a number of years later, after Zionist activity developed and the Yishuv grew. As we will see in greater detail in the next chapter, fishing villages were first established along the coast in the thirties—Mishmar HaYam next to Acre, Neve Yam next to Atlit, Hulata on the shores of the Hula Lake, and Ein Gev on Lake Kinneret—an important foundation for the development of the fishing industry in the Land of Israel.

Maritime Academy Proposal An additional—and no less important—step proposed by the commission for the establishment of Jewish maritime independence in the Land of Israel was a school for academic maritime studies. The assumption was that alongside the

 Samsonov, Zichron Yaakov, 212– 16.  Land of Israel Water Commission, “Tarbut ha-Mayim be-Erets Yiśrael,” 18 December 1919, S30/2575, CZA, Jerusalem. Gurvitz’s proposal to transform Solomon’s Pools into fish-breeding ponds was never realized, but the plan did have a few advantages: “(1) We will revive the historical ponds; (2) We will create something beautiful and alive; (3) We will supply live fish to Jerusalem; (4) We will create a new profession; (5) We will give work to learned workers; (6) We will create a settlement in the area.” M. Gurvitz to M. Ussishkin [in Hebrew], 29 January 1920, L3/65 – 1, CZA, Jerusalem.  M. Gurvitz to B. Goldberg, Zionist Executive [in Hebrew], London, 13 April 1920, S8/1156, CZA, Jerusalem; “Water Culture” [in Hebrew], Kontres 1, 14 Nissan 5679 (1919), 33.

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practical work being done, workers would need to be trained in the theory; training would need to rest on current scientific foundations that were adapted to the land’s specific conditions, in order to stand at the forefront of research and modern maritime technique. The professional maritime school would supplement the activities at the farm and aboard ships with theory. Biology, natural sciences, mathematics, and geography would be taught with a maritime perspective and with special attention paid to water culture. The school’s goal would be to graduate students who could be useful in reviving the water culture. It was suggested that the school accept students with a certain amount of previous knowledge and experience at sea.⁶⁵ This Water Commission proposal remained on paper as well; however, it was a herald of the need for a school for maritime training.⁶⁶ The Water Commission’s ideas and plans went unrealized for the most part; a few came to fruition only years later, after Zionist activity developed and the Yishuv grew. In the coming section we will take a look at the changes that took place in the twenties and the early thirties in the Jaffa and Haifa ports, two central ports that were active when the British arrived in Palestine and in which, from the beginning of the period, signs of change could be seen in the Jewish hold on the sea—in contrast with the state of affairs in the late Ottoman period.

Early Jewish Activity in the Ports of Jaffa and Haifa The conquest of Palestine by the British army in 1917 and the change in reign precipitated a new period of great shifts in the land’s chronicles. Among the first subjects the British saw fit to attend to in order to firmly establish their rule in the quickest and most efficient manner possible was the infrastructure around the country, including postal services, the telegraph, the telephone, and transportation. The British repaired the roads, beginning with the Jaffa–Jerusalem road, and reconnected the Jaffa–Jerusalem rail line, which had been partially disconnected during the war and was bought from the French company

 Land of Israel Water Association, Water Culture, 18; M. Gurvitz to M. Ussishkin [in Hebrew], 24 November 1919, L3/65 – 1, CZA, Jerusalem; Land of Israel Water Association, “Tarbut haMayim be-Erets Yiśrael,” 18 December 1919, S30/2575, CZA, Jerusalem.  A maritime academy was founded in Haifa in 1938—some twenty years after Gurvitz’s proposal—in cooperation with the Jewish Agency’s Maritime Department, the Palestine Maritime League, and the Technion in Haifa, which the school was attached to, allowing the school to take advantage of the teaching staff, scientific equipment, and Technion laboratories. See further details in the next chapter.

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that owned the franchise. In Jaffa, a railroad line was laid for a train connecting the port to the railroad station and, later on, the railroad was expanded to other areas in the land as well. This railroad served the port for a decade, slowly becoming irrelevant with the paving of roads for other forms of transportation.⁶⁷ In the early years of British rule, the government did not develop the land’s ports— and Jaffa’s port specifically—because of the great expense involved in improving the trains and roads; early in the period the Mandate government made do with regulating the work at the existing ports. As in the past, the large ships arriving at Jaffa’s harbor continued to anchor outside of the port, with loading and offloading done using small boats that moved between the dock and the ships; many workdays were lost because of the weather.⁶⁸ One of the first questions the British government had to answer in its early years in Palestine related to the place of a deepwater port. The locations under consideration were Haifa and Jaffa, and discussions ranged on a number of levels, from Palestine’s merchants to the British government committee. Reasons given for its location related to economics, strategy, settlement, security, contact with other countries, and oil ports. Various surveys conducted by British experts, government experts, and private experts or experts from the Zionist movement were inclined to back Haifa, due to the more convenient physical conditions and the lower expenses projected relative to the building of a deepwater port in Jaffa.⁶⁹ One of the first and most important reports composed on the subject was by engineer Frederick Palmer of the port-building company Rendel Palmer & Tritton, who was asked to check the feasibility of establishing a deepwater port in Jaffa. Palmer was in Palestine between November 1922 and August 1923, at which time he surveyed all of the places in the land that had ever served as a port: Gaza, Ashkelon, Yavne, Jaffa, Caesarea, Haifa, and Acre. His initial conclusion was that the most suitable place for establishing a deepwater port in Palestine was the bay of Haifa; investing in developing the port of Jaffa was needless.⁷⁰ In contrast, representatives of the local populations, primarily in the Jaffa-Tel Aviv region, advocated for the port of Jaffa.⁷¹

 Ram, Jewish Community in Jaffa, 302– 4; Biger, Crown Colony, 81– 114.  Biger, Crown Colony, 114– 15.  Ibid., 115n82, in which a number of the proposals and reports are detailed. Some Yishuv leaders also supported establishing a port in Haifa. See Pevzner, “Palestine’s Port,” 21– 25.  Palmer was one of the most important port engineers to work in England in the first half of the twentieth century. For more on Palmer, his survey, and the final decision of the Colonial Office, see Fine, “British Policy,” 150 – 53.  Reports and memos sent by various agents in Jaffa between 1923 and 1926 in favor of developing the port in the city; see L51/171 and L51/175, CZA, Jerusalem.

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Fig. 1: Jaffa Port, May 1, 1934. Photographer: Zoltan Kluger (The National Photo Collection, D840-028)

Representatives of British admiralty were in favor of the Jaffa port due to its distance from French territory and proximity to the Suez Canal—despite the fact that the reefs in the Jaffa area were known to be treacherous. The head of the Public Works Department was for the Jaffa port, due to the possibility of exporting future cargo from the Dead Sea and laying an oil pipeline from Iraq to Jaffa, which was shorter than to Haifa. Agronomist Shmuel Tolkowsky, one of the leaders of the Jewish community in Jaffa at the time, passionately defended the plan to develop Jaffa’s port, claiming that Jaffa was the natural commercial outlet to the sea for the country’s central and southern regions. Given the “danger” of establishing a large deepwater port in Haifa, a special committee was established in Jaffa comprised of economic agents in the city—

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the “Committee for the Building of Jaffa Port.”⁷² It contained two Jewish representatives, one of whom was Shmuel Tolkowsky, who was selected as chair as well. The committee members appealed to High Commissioner Herbert Samuel, but their petitions went unanswered. Three of the committee members, led by Tolkowsky, even traveled to London to bring their demands to the Colonial Office, but there, too, their request was denied.⁷³ Tolkowsky felt that the primary consideration in deciding where Palestine’s central port would be should be the good of the residents rather than imperial interests. In his opinion, transport through Haifa’s port would raise the expense of transportation and delivery of merchandise to the center of the country for the residents, harming them economically. He also took issue with the strategic claim for Haifa as a port, claiming that even for the British, there was no advantage in investing in Haifa’s port— the political separation between Palestine and Syria would make it impossible to import and export Syrian goods to the Haifa port and back. He further claimed that the port’s hinterland was not a convenient place for a military port, as it was visible from the Carmel ridge that overlooked the bay.⁷⁴ Shortly after Palmer’s report was received, the British Mandate in Palestine chose to act on its recommendations—to build a deepwater port in Haifa, primarily because of its location and natural features. As we will soon see, within the discussion about developing the port in Haifa and its consideration of the connection between port city and hinterland, the decision to develop Haifa in

 The primary goal of the committee was to fund proposals for the development of the Jaffa port and thus to attempt to prevent the preference for Haifa’s port. See Fine, “British Policy,” 145.  Avitsur, Rise and Fall, 132– 35. In light of the urgent need to develop other realms, it seems that ports at the time of High Commissioner Samuel were not prioritized. However, during the era of High Commission Plumer, in the second half of the twenties, it was clear that there was movement in developing the land’s ports. Plumer felt that “this administration will fail Palestine’s commercial community in this role if it does not open Jaffa port.” Similar pressure was placed on hastening the work at Haifa port. Cited in Biger, Crown Colony, 116.  S. Tolkowsky, “Haifa or Jaffa: Where Is the First Palestinian Port to Be Built?”, undated, L51/ 175, CZA, Jerusalem. Shmuel Tolkowsky, “Haifa or Jaffa: Where Is the First Palestinian Port to Be Built?” [in Hebrew], Yediot ha-Ḥevra le-Hitpatḥut ha-Kalkalit le-Erets Yiṥrael 2 (1922): 15 – 21. For more on the disagreement between Jewish agencies on the place of the new port, see Stern, “Dispute,” 171– 74. Shmuel Tolkowsky, who wrote a book at the time on the history of Jaffa, was an agronomist by profession, the owner of an orchard in Rehovot, and one of the founders of the “Citrus Center” for marketing citrus. It appears that his dreams of opening the port and his opposition to developing the Haifa port were tied to his attempt to prevent damage to sales of citrus through Jaffa’s port. Later, he was one of the founders of the Palestine Maritime League, which will be discussed at greater length in the next chapter. For more on Shmuel Tolkowsky, see Rokach, Jaffa Orange Groves, 234– 37 and Biger “Foreword,” in Tolkowsky, History of Jaffa (2001 edition).

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particular was a matter of principle: the Jaffa port served Palestine’s hinterland very well, but not the imperial interests of the British; the opposite was true of the Haifa port. In the decision to develop Haifa’s port, then, the good of the British superpower took precedence over the country’s economy.⁷⁵ The plan to build the Haifa port had been formed and approved years earlier, but its construction began in 1929, and it opened in late October 1933. Until then, Jaffa remained Palestine’s central port—based on the amount of cargo that passed through it as well as its economic value.⁷⁶ With the end of the First World War, activities resumed at the port with the Arab sailors, organized in strong unions, categorically refusing to allow entry to new workers—primarily Jews—and continuing to control it as they had in the past.⁷⁷ In the early twenties, the Jaffa port’s activities did not reach the scope they had earlier; it was only a number of years later that the port recovered and traffic of ships and cargo surpassed the pre-war records. In 1925—at the peak of the Fourth Aliyah—the port reached dimensions never before seen. During that year, 1,511 vessels anchored in the port, 832 of them sailboats and 679 of them steamships, with a total tonnage of 1,568,031 tons. In comparison with 1913, this was an addition of a mere 14 steamships and 156 sailboats—but it was an increase of some 400,000 tons in the ships’ capacity. The weight of import alone reached 163,000 tons, nearly double the weight of the total imported and exported cargo in 1913. In 1934, the port reached its peak: 608,000 tons of cargo, or 1,700 tons passed through it on average each day; some 4.25 million boxes of apples were sent across the sea; the value of maritime trade surpassed 10 million Palestine pounds. The Mandate government’s income from customs taxes at the Jaffa port were quite significant, reaching nearly one quarter of the Mandate government’s total income at the time.⁷⁸

Jews at Jaffa’s Port The growing activity at the port of Jaffa, beginning in the early twenties, was influenced in large part by Jewish immigration and the growth of Jewish settlement in Palestine—a good portion of the passengers passing through the port

 Karmon, “Mediterranean Ports,” 141– 49; Stern, “Port in Haifa,” in Naor and Ben-Artzi, Haifa.  Trade and Commerce Bulletin 11 (September 1933): 4– 5 [in Hebrew].  Rokach, Jaffa Orange Groves, 28 – 29.  Avitsur, Rise and Fall, 166 – 68. The economic development at Jaffa’s port, then, continued despite the fact that the demand to make it a deepwater port was rejected.

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were Jews and much of the imported cargo was intended for the Yishuv’s consumption.⁷⁹ In the first half of the thirties, three prominent attempts were made to involve Jewish workers in loading and offloading work, primarily through creating Jewish-Arab partnerships between workers. In the summer of 1931, Gurvitz initiated the “Jewish-Arab Sailors’ Union,” founded against the backdrop of the conflict that erupted between Arab sailors at the Jaffa port, in which Arab porters cooperated for a time with groups of Jewish porters.⁸⁰ Another attempt is recorded by Isaac Rokach, who states that at David Ben-Gurion’s initiative a Jewish-Arab partnership was created in Jaffa in 1935 for moving merchandise in boats. However, when the agreement became known to the mufti in Jerusalem, he ordered the Arab partners to reneg on the deal.⁸¹ A group of Jewish workers managed to gain access to the port for a short while—the members of HaKibbutz HaMeuhad’s Hebrew Socialist Youth, which settled first in the Borochov neighborhood in Tel Aviv and later on the banks of the Yarkon. They opened a small auxiliary farm and conducted preliminary experiments sailing boats and fishing. They began to work in Jaffa’s port in August 1935; however, after a few months, when tensions at the port rose, they were forced to stop working there.⁸² All of these efforts, then, were short-lived; they did not lead to a significant change over time in Arab dominance, in the Arab unions’ absolute hold on the work. The state of affairs endured throughout the Mandate period. However, on the timeline of the Yishuv’s evolving national maritime narrative, these attempts can be characterized as activities in which the element of competition and conquest of the sea from the Arabs was not yet pronounced; they can be seen as Jewish attempts to develop the maritime field through cooperation with the Arab maritime world rather than in battle with it. In contrast, with the passing of time—and especially after the Arab Revolt of 1936—the evolving Jewish maritime narrative placed an emphasis on the Arab threat and the national conflict that must be waged against it. The narrative also highlighted the modern develop-

 One of the peaks was recorded in the 1925 – 26 fruit season, which was one of the most successful seen in the industry, with new records in the amount of fruit exported. See Ever-Hadani, Pardes Association, 105 – 8. For more on citrus in the Sharon region, see Giladi, “Citrus Growing.”  Protocol of a meeting dedicated to the question of the Jewish-Arab Sailors’ Union, Chamber of Commerce, Jaffa [in Hebrew], 9 August 1931, S25/2612, CZA, Jerusalem; Sailors’ Union, Jaffa, to the secretary of the Jewish National Council, Jerusalem [in Hebrew], 26 August 1931, S25/2612, CZA, Jerusalem.  Rokach, Jaffa Orange Groves, 159.  Porat, Fishery Pioneers, 159.

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ment of various sea professions, which largely discounted the work of the Arabs; it was instead rooted in the evolving national maritime struggle. A certain increase took place in the presence of Jews at the Jaffa port during the Mandate Period. The growth of the Jewish population in Palestine, the increase in economic activity, and the development of Jewish agriculture all ultimately led to the growth of activity at the port. Along with the customs agents, the merchants, and their representatives, Jews began to appear as agents of shipping companies and government clerks in port offices, passport control, and the health ministry. They were joined by a few Jewish police officers, clerks from the Jewish Agency’s Aliyah Department, and importers, exporters, and their officials.⁸³ The most noticeable involvement of Jewish work was in land transport to and from the port. In 1921, two Arab contractors operated a carriage network at the port—and two Jews were among the coachmen they employed. These were, ostensibly, the first two Jewish wagoners at the port of Jaffa. The number of Jewish coachmen continued to grow; by Passover of 1922 there was a group of Jewish coachmen, with twelve carts, working at the port. In the mid-twenties, thirty-two Jewish coachmen were attached to the port. A group of Jewish coachmen at the Jaffa port, known as the Hebrew Coachmen’s Group, was headed by Pinia Rodnitzki (Pinhas Ashad) and Binyamin Efrati.⁸⁴ This was a group of independent Jewish wagoners that slowly entered the power plays at the port; over time, the group became an association and a cooperative—Hanamal, founded in 1928. With the establishment of the cooperative, the personal ownership of each coachman over his cart and animals was annulled, and they became the property of the cooperative. A special neighborhood was also established for them, “The Wagoners’ Neighorhood,” later known as “The Railway Neighborhood.” In the meantime, an additional cart cooperative was founded at the port, “Hahof.” A number of other cargo transport cooperatives were founded later on at Jaffa’s port—and, later still, at the Tel Aviv port. With the growth in cargo transport, primarily during the time known as the era of “prosperity” in the first half of the thirties, the cooperatives began to purchase trucks and become mixed cooperatives, holding both carts and trucks for the transport of

 Ram, Jewish Community in Jaffa, 302– 4.  Rokach, Jaffa Orange Groves, 28 – 29. Binyamin Efrati was born in Lipsk in Poland in 1895 and moved to the Land of Israel in 1920. He initially worked in the Jezreel Valley, but due to a fever he settled in Tel Aviv in 1921 and began to work at the Jaffa port as a porter. He was one of the founders of the transportation cooperative “Hanamal.” In his memoirs, he writes that when the rioting began and Jaffa’s Arab sailors shut down the port, he initiated a meeting of the Jews—customs agents, clerks, and porters—and they decided together not to return to the port. See Efrati, Generations, 1.

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cargo. The trucks facilitated, for example, the transport of fruit from the distant Rishon Letzion or Rehovot colonies’ orchards directly to the port, without the need to adhere to the strict timetables of the train and to transfer crates from train cars to carts. The automation process in transport of goods on land was unavoidable—during the twenties, transport on camelback fairly disappeared, and by the end of the Mandate period even the carts were relegated to peripheral roles, disappearing nearly completely from the port’s landscape, replaced by trucks.⁸⁵ But hand in hand with the increase in ships and cargo, and with the development taking place in the means of transport to and from the port, the national enmity between Jews and Arabs that had begun early in the Mandate period swelled. This, of course, influenced Jewish-Arab relations in Jaffa directly, and at the port in particular. One prominent event early in the period—known as the 1921 Jaffa riots—left a deep mark on Jaffa’s Jewish community.⁸⁶ These events undermined the security and economic world of the Jews in the city, and relations between the Jews and Arabs did not return to their former state. In the midst of the riots, Arab leaders announced an economic boycott on the Jews, which threw the Yishuv’s dependence on the Arabs—and on Jaffa’s sailors in particular—into sharp relief. Jaffa’s Arab sailors did not answer the call of the moderate Arab leadership to halt the boycott, instead refusing to aid in the debarking of immigrants arriving at the Jaffa port. It has been asserted that some of the sailors may even have taken part in the riots themselves, participating in the murder

 The Hanamal cooperative continued to grow even after the port of Jaffa was closed to Jews, and in 1938 it had forty-four members and seven employees. Hahof had fifteen members and three employees. In September 1939, with the outbreak of the Second World War, civilian transport at the port of Jaffa dwindled, and with Italy and Germany entering the fray in spring 1940, it was brought to a complete halt. In mid-1945, with the end of the war, all of the transport cooperatives banded together, forming the large cooperative for cargo transport to the Tel Aviv and Jaffa ports, Shalev. With its establishment, the last remaining carts at the port of Jaffa were sold. See Assaf, Arab-Jewish Relations, 383; Avitsur, “Jaffa – Jerusalem Railway,” 40 – 41; Avitsur, “Jaffa’s ‘Terzina,’” 10 – 11; Avitsur, Rise and Fall, 141– 42. On the relations between the Pardes Association and the truck owners for the transport of fruit to the Jaffa port, see Kenan, Looking Back, 17– 19.  Jaffa was the center of the events that took place in 1921. In the immigrant hostel (located near the French Hospital), in which Jewish newcomers lived upon arrival in the country, fourteen Jews were killed and many others injured. On May 2, 1921, the second day of the riots, author Yosef Haim Brenner and five of his friends were killed in Mantura house (the Arab name of the house rented by the Yitzkar family), an isolated home in an orchard on the outskirts of Abu Kabir, overshadowing the massacre in Jaffa the day before. Yaffa, “Bloody Days,” in Aricha, Jaffa; Shapira, Brenner, 360 – 70. For details on the riots, see Ram, Jewish Community in Jaffa, 325 – 30.

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of Jews at the immigrant hostel next to the French Hospital.⁸⁷ This was the first time that Arabs closed the Jaffa port to Jewish traffic. Skirmishes also broke out between the British army and the Arab masses congregating at the port. The government was forced to reinforce the troops at the port and end the unloading of goods, and the immigrants who came to the shores at the time entered through the ports in Haifa, Beirut, and Qantara.⁸⁸ The permanent shift in Jaffa is clearly seen in the city’s demographic decline and the growth of Tel Aviv: on the eve of the riots, the Jewish population in Jaffa was between twelve and thirteen thousand residents, but in 1922 less than half remained—only 5,087 Jews. The decline of the Jewish population in Jaffa continued throughout the Mandate period, alongside the meteoric growth of Tel Aviv; at the beginning of the thirties, Tel Aviv became Palestine’s biggest city.⁸⁹ The memory of events in 1921 in Jaffa and the enmity between Jews and Arabs in the city apparently continued to accompany the city’s residents in the years that followed. In the riots of 1929, eight Jews and twelve Arabs were killed in Jaffa; this was recently described as having touched off the growing separatism and the changing face of relations between Jews and Arabs in the country—making the conflict between them a violent national conflict.⁹⁰ Despite Arab control at the port of Jaffa and the dwindling Jewish population in the city, the port served for a long period of time as one of the transit places through which weapons for defending the Yishuv were smuggled. In the first half of the thirties, using an existing arrangement with porters who were Haganah sympathizers, suitcases of weapons and ammunition with a total weight of roughly twelve tons was unloaded at the Jaffa port. Moreover, weapons and ammunition were brought in in cement barrels. On October 16, 1935, one of the barrels fell and broke during unloading. The internal tin casing split in the fall, and a number of bullets fell onto the platform. An Arab worker at the port immediately notified the police, who took the cargo. Investigations conducted by port and customs authorities and by the police were closed when they could not verify who the owner of the cargo was and who should be tried—they were never able to determine who the weapons were destined for.⁹¹ The crucial moment in the relationship between Jews and the Jaffa port was undoubtedly tied to the rioting that broke out in Palestine on April 19, 1936 and to the closure of the Jaffa port to Jewish activity, which also cut off the gateway     

Rokach, Jaffa Orange Groves, 28. Avigur et al., Hagana, 97. Shavit and Biger, Tel Aviv, 91– 103. Hinkis, “1929 Riots,” in Aricha, Jaffa; Cohen, Year Zero, 1– 58. Dekel, Shai, 45 – 53.

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for weapons smuggling and increased the Jewish need for an independent port. The rioting led to a new peak in hostility between Jews and Arabs in the country —and in Jaffa in particular. One account of the day the strike began, when tensions were in the air, comes from a Jewish worker at the port: On April 19th, we went down to Jaffa for the last time. In the morning, a slumber poured over the city. There was no sign of the impending storm. When we came to the port, one Arab from Syria, a friend of ours, warned us not to work, and to return to Tel Aviv. He told us that on that day “Jews would be slaughtered in Jaffa.” We did not believe him and laughed at his words. At that very moment, an Arab passed, took out a knife, and said: “I will clean this knife with Jewish blood today.” We began to believe. We went to work anyway. We waited one hour, two hours, and the automobiles did not come. In the pathway near the port there was unrest. We left Jaffa, stones accompanying us.⁹²

The Arab Higher Committee, the body that initiated and oversaw the riots, announced a general strike. The council’s leaders hoped that in closing the ports, they would starve out the Yishuv and cause its surrender, because its existence was based on food and essential products brought in from abroad, across the sea. The rise in the port’s output ceased—but the strike was damaging to the Arab economy in general, and the Jaffa port was dealt a heavy blow. The strike delayed the growth and development of the port, ultimately sounding the port’s death knell.⁹³ At that point, Haifa’s port was already active; the events in Jaffa only increased its volume of activity. It received no small amount of the produce—primarily citrus fruit and industrial products—that was slated to go through Jaffa’s port.⁹⁴ Moreover, Tel Aviv’s port was quickly established and developed, and the city, which had until then been fully dependent on the ports of Jaffa and Haifa, could now secure itself, and the surrounded settlements, direct access to the sea, independent of external forces, as we will see in more detail in the next chapter. From the second half of the nineteenth century until its closure to Jews in 1936, Jaffa’s port saw clear changes: Jews appeared as agents, merchants, porters, and officials. The gradual growth in active Jewish presence at the port noticeably did not include loading and unloading cargo. Despite attempts made by Jews, port work remained entirely in Arab hands; with the outbreak of the rioting in 1936, the Arabs closed the port to Jewish presence. The closure affected the

 L. Zvi, “From My Work in the Jaffa Port” [in Hebrew], Tsror Mikhtavim 28 (93), 21 June 1937, 14.  For more on the Jaffa port until 1936 from the Arab perspective, see in detail: Goren, “Developing Jaffa’s Port.”  Avitsur, Rise and Fall, 169 – 73.

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land’s other coastal cities. In the late twenties, as we will see, the British had begun to establish the renewed Haifa port; thus a developed port in Haifa was already active. The Jaffa port’s closure was also one of the central factors leading to the inauguration of the Tel Aviv port in mid-1936.

The Establishment of the Haifa Port The greatest change in Palestine’s ports during the Mandate period was without a doubt the establishment of the new port in Haifa. The aftermath of the First World War meant a new imperial reality for the British Empire; for the first time in its history, it reigned over a territorial contiguity that extended from the eastern basin of the Mediterranean Sea to the Persian Gulf. This new circumstance made it possible for Britain to secure a transit route on the way to India. This might dimish the importance of the Suez Canal; despite the fact that it was under the full control of the British, company shares were held by both the British and the French. Britain would thus be able to take advantage of the oil reservoirs in Iraq. Britain, in this view, attributed great significance to building an imperial transit port on the banks of the eastern basin of the Mediterranean, which would be a bridgehead for the new pathway and an outlet for the gas pipeline from Iraq. Haifa was perceived as a key site in the British Empire’s developing transport system, primarily because of its strategic location and its port. The decision to build a port in Haifa also stemmed from physical convenience, from advantages that Haifa’s bay gave the port, and from the relative expense of developing a deepwater port in Haifa in comparison to Jaffa.⁹⁵ Haifa’s bay was first raised as an element in British strategic planning for conquering the Middle East a decade before the British conquest of the land; according to the 1916 Sykes-Picot Agreement, Britain was supposed to rule Haifa and the bay until Acre.⁹⁶ In the early British period, British companies submitted a number of other plans to the British Colonial Office for the construction of Palestine’s deepwater port. The last plan accepted as the basis for building the Haifa port was, as noted above, that of Frederick Palmer from Rendel Palmer & Tritton in London; it was selected in 1924.⁹⁷ Due to financial issues, this

 Fine, “British Policy,” 127– 28.  Biger, “Sykes-Picot.”  In addition to the British and other plans that were raised and dismissed in the years before Palmer’s plan, a later plan, which was also not accepted, was that of Richard Kaufmann (1926), a plan that was included within his proposal for a general master plan for Haifa and the Zebulun Valley region all the way to Acre. Kaufmann claimed that building the port in the place Palmer

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plan did not come to fruition until the Mandate government enacted the Palestine and East Africa Loans (Guarantee) Bill in 1926.⁹⁸ Without going into too much detail about the plan for the port, it should be noted that the quarry in Atlit was developed for that purpose; the stone for building the breakwater was brought from there. Construction took four years, from 1929 until 1933. The port was deepened by extracting sand from the sea floor and piling it on the shore; thus there was a dry space of 340 dunams. The new port was an advanced one, with many improvements including the breakwater, platforms, storehouses, and an anchorage for boats and barges. It was opened officially on October 31, 1933.⁹⁹ The port’s construction, the passenger and cargo ships, the presence of international shipping, and the foreign seamen became an important element in Haifa’s position within the region and the shaping of a special international cosmopolitan cultural atmosphere, uncharacteristic of other cities in Palestine during the Mandate era.¹⁰⁰ However, as stated, during the years of the Haifa port’s construction Jaffa’s port remained as important as ever, continuing to transport some half of the total goods passing through Palestine’s harbors.¹⁰¹ It was only with the outbreak of the strike in the Jaffa port at the beginning of the Arab Revolt, in the summer of 1936, that Haifa’s port gained priority for goods’ transport over the ports of Jaffa and Tel Aviv, the two other ports that were active in the country at that time. The establishment of the Tel Aviv port, which opened in 1936 as a response to the Arab boycott, will be discussed in the next chapter.

suggested would leave it without a hinterland and would be a serious error. His opinion was that the port should be planned within a broader urban outline. His proposal required large capital investments not only for building the port but also to support environmental infrastructure. For more, see Stern, “Dispute,” 174– 86.  Fine, “British Policy,” 153. The Palestine Mandate government’s economic policy was based on the principle of promoting the British Empire’s interests, keeping Britain’s economic interests in mind, but the Palestine government would not place the burden on the English taxpayer. See Gross, “Economic Policy,” 156 – 57.  In honor of the opening of the Haifa port, the Mandate government published an album of pictures of the port. See Palestine Government, Haifa Harbor. The Iraqi company’s gas pipeline was brought to the port in 1934, and in 1937 the gas platform was built. In those years, a special pier was built for the power station in Haifa east of the port. The refineries’ tanker area was built for receiving and dispatching crude oil. See Soffer, “Haifa Port,” in Soffer and Kipnis, Atlas of Haifa, 106 – 7.  Ben-Artzi, “Uniqueness,” in Naor and Ben-Artzi, Haifa.  Stern, “Port in Haifa,” in Naor and Ben-Artzi, Haifa, 75 – 76.

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Jewish Workers and the Construction of the Haifa Port The Yishuv’s share in port work was most significant in the new port built by the British in Haifa, whose construction ended in late 1933. In the twenties, the British had shown increasing interest in the city of Haifa and its industrial factories. The establishment of Jewish factories in the city stemmed, in part, from the idea that Haifa would eventually contain the country’s central port. It did, indeed, become a crucial gateway for entry and exit to the land, and many immigrants and resources that were necessary for the development of the Yishuv traversed it.¹⁰² In contrast to the older Jaffa port, where the Arab sailors had a firm hold and could not be driven out, the Haifa port had no sailors with seniority. Moreover, the plethora of jobs unloading at the factories that had been established in the north, and the British decision to establish a new port in Haifa, necessitated growing numbers of workers at the port, increasing the chances that Jewish laborers could join the workforce as porters. All of these factors led to the first attempts to place Jewish workers at the port of Haifa in the early twenties, before the new port was even built. Jewish groups from the Histadrut began working at the old port moving wood and building supplies. One of these porters was Berl Repetur, who became the leader of a group of Jewish porters at the time.¹⁰³ In early 1922 it was reported that “for roughly a year a group of workers has been organized loading and unloading at the Haifa port. It was with great difficulty that our comrades were able to infiltrate the sector, which was entirely outside of our influence and labor. Nonetheless they have specialized in their work, and now Arab contractors Ahmed Bey and Jabra try to give them work.”¹⁰⁴ However, there were cases in which Jews encountered opposition on the part of the Arab workers, and they even came to clashes and blows; it took great efforts to maintain the positions they were beginning to procure at the port.¹⁰⁵ In a dis-

 Gross, “Industrialization”; Biger, “Urban Hierarchy,” 87– 98; Biger, “Industrial Structure,” 82– 86.  B. Repetur, “The Group of Porters” [in Hebrew], Kontres 114, 9 Nissan 5682 (1922), 35 – 36; B. Repetur, “The State of Porter Work” [in Hebrew], Kontres 134, 15 Tammuz 5683 (1923), 22– 24; B. Repetur, “Work at the Port” [in Hebrew], Kontres 137, 14 Av 5683 (1923), 21– 23. Repetur later became one of the founders of Solel Boneh and a leader in the Histadrut. For more on Repetur see Goren, Berl Repetur.  D. Cohen, “Haifa” [in Hebrew], Kontres 112, 17 Adar 5682 (1922), 32.  Joseph Duvdevani, one of the leaders of Hanamal, a Jewish pioneer at Haifa port, reports that in August 1921 he, with a group of thirty-one people, began to work at the port under the auspices of the Histadrut. See testimony of Joseph Duvdevani, Statement of the Haifa Port Authority [in Hebrew], 49, September 1963, 21; the organization of porter labor at Haifa’s port in the early twenties laid the groundwork for the status of the Haifa Workers’ Council, which in time became a dominant body at the port.

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cussion with Ramsay MacDonald, then leader of the Labour Party in England, Berl Repetur responded to Arab claims that there was not enough work at the port for Jews; Repetur stated that the work at Haifa’s port was swelling and thus there was no reason to incite unrest between Arabs and Jews.¹⁰⁶ One of the first Jews to enter the port was Shmuel Pevzner, who founded the Hiram company in Haifa in 1920. The company employed primarily Arabs, but there was a small group of Jewish workers as well, employed in sorting iron, barrels of cement, and wood.¹⁰⁷ In that same year, a group of Jews from the Shomria Battalion began to work at the port, people from the Third Aliyah, who were among the pavers of the Haifa–Jeida road.¹⁰⁸ The battalion formed in September 1920, comprised of members of the Hashomer Hatzair movement from eastern Galicia’s Turka and Buchach villages. The leader of the Hashomer Hatzair group in Turka, a member of the battalion’s leadership, was Abba Hushi, who obtained more work for the battalion’s members in unloading coal from ships in Haifa’s port.¹⁰⁹ Later on, Abba Hushi served for nineteen years as the head of the Haifa Workers’ Council, which was a major player at the port thanks to its organizational strength and its monopoly over Haifa’s labor market.¹¹⁰

 Repetur, Without Let Up, 95; Avigur et al., Hagana, 2:1:284.  Hacohen, Time to Tell, 31. Pevzner, who was from the Second Aliyah and one of the founders of the Hadar Hacarmel neighborhood, settled in Haifa in 1906. David Hacohen, who was his nephew, described him as first and foremost among the public activists in Haifa, an active and loyal Zionist, an engineer by trade, highly educated and culturally European. His wife Leah was the eldest daughter of Ahad Ha’am (Asher Zvi Hirsch Ginsberg, the noted Zionist thinker), and their home hosted meetings of Haifa’s intelligentsia, Yishuv leaders, and dignitaries from the Zionist leadership visiting from overseas in the twenties. For more on this, see Hacohen, “Fragments,” 71. Understanding and friendly relations developed between Berl Repetur and Shmuel Pevzner, and the two displayed a joint Zionist interest in the activity of Jews at the port. For more on this, see Goren, Berl Repetur, 46, 101. Pevzner’s Hiram company was a trading company for building supplies, well-known in Haifa in the twenties. Rosa Cohen, Yitzhak Rabin’s mother, served as the company’s accountant at the time, and began a strike in response to the inclusion of Arab workers in the company’s storage facilities. She put aside a set amount from her large salary, using it to lay the foundations for establishing a defense force in Haifa. See Repetur, Without Let Up, 79 – 80; Goren, Berl Repetur, 99 – 104.  Today, Jeida is Ramat Yishai. Shomria was named for the Shomria Valley, which is the Yagur Stream near the location of the battalion’s camp, erected in 1920.  Hayam, Ships’ Tales, 71– 72. The unloading of coal was strenuous labor. While unloading, the porters inhaled coal dust into their lungs, suffering terribly as a result; it also damaged their eyes. See Pomrok, Twilight, 52– 53.  Much has been written about Abba Hushi. For a selection see Eshel, Abba Hushi; Eshel, Man of Haifa; on the Haifa Workers’ Council, see Biletsky, Creativity and Struggle, 265 – 70; Biletsky, “Abba Hushi,” in Nedava, Haifa.

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From the start of the new port’s construction, at the end of the twenties, the majority of workers were Arab. However, efforts were made by Jewish institutions to keep a hold on the port and incorporate Jewish workers in its construction; Jewish involvement in its operation was considered crucial to guaranteeing the basic needs and interests of the Jewish population in the country as a whole.¹¹¹ Many efforts were made on this score on the part of the Haifa Workers’ Council, which saw Jewish conquest of work at the port as one of its central functions. It should be noted, though, that the council’s struggle to include Jewish workers at the port was part and parcel with the council’s objective of reinforcing its political, sectoral-worker influence within Haifa’s Jewish community and within the Histadrut. The council interacted with the British government and the port’s administration in order to faciliate the presence of Jewish workers and increase the Jewish hold on it, activity that continued throughout all of the years of the Mandate. The competition that developed between the port’s Arab and Jewish workers, who were represented by the Haifa Workers’ Council, was equally part of the struggle for Jewish work generally—and at the developing port in particular—a struggle that had clear national implications.¹¹² The port was also essential from an economic perspective, as the largest governmental place of work; it was of great significance to the workers in Haifa, a city that regularly suffered from a lack of work and extended periods of severe unemployment.¹¹³ The first stages of Jewish involvement in labor at the new developing Haifa port integrated economic dimensions and sectoral dimensions with a clear political bent, which began to merge with the general Jewish Yishuv narrative. This narrative—evolving at that time—was expressed in the image of the Jewish work struggle, which was perceived as cross-sectoral and taking a clear national tone. Initially, a large number of Arab day laborers were hired to work at the port, at a daily wage that at its height reached fifteen qirsh—a salary considered fair for an Arab worker but insufficient for Jewish workers, who were therefore not

 In 1929, the Jewish Chamber of Commerce in Haifa founded a committee on the port. The committee’s chair, Shlomo Zalman Nathanson, summarized the subjects that the committee members and leaders of the Yishuv felt should be focused on regarding the port: expanding Jewish work in building the port, Jewish participation in different contractorships, ensuring that Jews were employed at all levels of the port’s management, and maintaining Jewish rights to contracts for supplying the materials and products for the building of the port. For reports from the committee’s meetings, see Eshel, Port of Haifa, 22– 25.  Shapira, Futile Struggle; Metzer and Kaplan, Jewish and Arab Economies.  De Vries, “Labor Movement,” 68 – 104; Bernstein, “Porters and Stevedores,” 119 – 20.

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eager to work at the port.¹¹⁴ In 1930, one year after construction began at the port, there were 650 workers employed in its construction; of these, 110 were Jewish, a low number that did not accord with the promises the government had made about employing Jewish workers in the project.¹¹⁵ In advance of the port’s inauguration, it was announced that some eighteen hundred took part in construction, which took around four years—only three hundred of these were Jews, including twenty out of the total forty engineers who took part in planning the port. The specific contribution of Jewish engineers to the port’s construction was ostensibly greater than was the community’s disappointment with the relatively small portion of the Yishuv that helped build it: as one journalist noted, “And if in actual work the Jew cannot fulfill his duty and enjoy all of his rights in the building of the port, in the intellectual and technical professional work, the British engineers found almost all of their assistants amongst the Jewish technical forces.”¹¹⁶

 In Haifa the workforce was split—there was a broad, inexpensive workforce as well as a narrower, more expensive one. Jewish and Arab laborers in Palestine differed in background and migration, and these were the determining factors in their differing values in Haifa’s labor market. The Jewish workers, for the most part, came from countries that had already begun to witness processes of industrialization and proletarianization, of recognizing an industrialized labor market, of hired work, and of worker unions. The Jews were also experienced in political, socialist, and Zionist movements. Most were educated, and aspired not only to work but also to attain a decent standard of living; they could demand and receive a higher wage, as befitting a cultured worker from an organized and established working class. The Arabs, on the other hand, who came at an increasing rate to Haifa, were primarily (75 percent) from the surrounding villages, from inland cities, and from more distant villages. The roughly 25 percent remaining came from neighboring lands—Egypt, Transjordan, and Hauran. The Arab workers were largely not professionals, looking instead for temporary and occasional work; a lower wage could be paid to them than could be paid to a Jewish worker. The unceasing Arab immigration to the city drove down their wages and working conditions—but for the Jews, Haifa was the center of the creation of workers’ unions and professional associations. Much has been written on this subject. For a selection, see Bernstein, “Porters and Stevedores,” 120 – 21; Bernstein, “Nesher”; Vashitz, “Rural Migration”; Yazbak, “Arab Immigration”; Biletsky, Creativity and Struggle; Lockman, Comrades and Enemies; Smith, Roots of Separatism.  D. Hacohen, Labor Center, General Federation of Labor in Palestine (Histadrut), Tel Aviv, to the Labor Department of the Jewish Agency, Jerusalem [in Hebrew], 8 September 1930, S9/1133, CZA, Jerusalem. Hacohen claimed that the existing reality of a small number of Jewish workers in the port’s construction was a result of the government and port management’s unwillingness, but also felt that the Jewish institutions did not see the importance of the subject from a national perspective and were not doing enough to improve the situation.  David Cohen, “An Enterprise’s Accounts” [in Hebrew], Davar, October 31, 1933, 10.

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The first significant Jewish contribution to construction of the new port was in the Atlit quarry. The port’s planners needed 1,300,000 meters¹¹⁷ of stone to build the breakwater at the new port. Three hundred thousand of this was hewn by two hundred Jewish workers at quarries—of the total three hundred Jews employed in building the port.¹¹⁸ In Atlit, some seventeen kilometers from Haifa, there was a type of stone well-suited for the purpose, and quarries were established, with cutting-edge automation for digging the largest possible stone blocks. The stones were loaded onto train cars and brought to the port in Haifa. Hundreds of Arabs from the villages around Atlit worked at the quarry. The Histadrut, through its Office for Public Works, took pains to incorporate Jewish workers in work at the quarry.¹¹⁹ Negotiations between the Jewish Agency’s Political Department and the Mandate government yielded results: some of the work would be rerouted to the Jewish workers under one condition—that the work done by Jewish workers not cost the British government more than Arab work. The problem, of course, was how to make that happen while also ensuring that the Jewish workers made at least thirty qirsh per day; the Arabs earned fifteen. A double-barrelled solution was found to the problem. First, the port’s administration agreed that Jews could work under contract, thus increasing production and renumeration. Second, Jews would receive compensation for the release of the port’s administration from medical care due to their membership in health funds; the Arab workers received a daily wage that was supplemented by a commitment on the part of the administration to be responsible for their medical expenses.¹²⁰

 The original article in Davar gives the measurement in meters; it is most probably an error and should refer to tons.  David Cohen, “An Enterprise’s Accounts“ [in Hebrew], Davar, October 31, 1933, 10.  The Office for Public Works was established in 1921 by the Histadrut, in an effort to unite under it the management of contractor groups from the Ahdut HaAvoda and Hapoel Hatzair parties for public works, working primarily in paving roads for the Mandate government. In 1924, after the office underwent a financial crisis, they resolved to establish a company called “Solel Boneh—Cooperative Workers’ Company for Public Works, Construction, and Industry” and run it as a business. It reached the peak of its activity during the Arab Revolt and the Second World War, thanks to jobs provided by the British Mandate authorities. For more on public works and Solel Boneh, see Dan, Solel Boneh; Biletsky, Solel-Boneh; Lev-Faur, Visible Hand.  The Jewish workers were able to increase their production as a result of the contract work they agreed upon: because each train car was weighed at the quarry before it left for Haifa, the price for each ton of quarried stone was calculated, and the compensation that each worker received was more than each Arab worker received. See Hacohen, Time to Tell, 46 – 49; Repetur, Without Let Up, 41– 45; Eshel, Port of Haifa, 21– 22.

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In order to make double the salary of the Arab worker, the group of hewers needed to be able to stand the test of difficult, grueling physical work for an extended period of time. They would, preferably, have some experience in that type of work and a certain technical-professional advantage over traditional hewing. Laborers who had worked quarrying in Pinhas Rutenberg’s factory in the Naharayim power station, whose work was ending at the time, were well-suited for the job; Rutenberg agreed to transfer them to Atlit. The workers from Naharayim learned to use heavy air hammers and drills for stone in a short period of time, and practiced working with cranes to load stone blocks on train cars quickly. They also enhanced their method of using explosives, attaining a higher rate of heavy stone blocks than that attained by the Arabs in quarrying. All of this made its mark, and the salary of Jewish workers reached as high as forty qirsh a day.¹²¹ Aside from the Jewish work in the Atlit quarry during the port’s construction, early attempts were made to place Jewish workers at the port itself, and a few Jews were employed unloading cars of stone and gravel that came from Atlit and moving stones into the sea in order to dry the area.¹²² One main factor facilitating a stronger Jewish hold on the port was the growth that had been taking place in the delivery of citrus fruits on the part of Jewish companies through the Haifa port since the early thirties. At that time, the first attempt was made to get work in citrus fruit porterage, by the Pardes company, the first company to send citrus fruits through the Haifa port. In 1930, the company first agreed to transfer 10 percent of its work to the Haifa Workers’ Council. The number of workers em-

 Repetur, Without Let Up, 45 – 46, 270; Goren, Berl Repetur, 156 – 59. Repetur began in Haifa as a quarry worker, and from there moved to be a porter and the leader of the Jewish porters at the port in the early twenties. The head of the workers’ union that moved from Naharayim to Atlit was Hillel Dan, who later headed Solel Boneh; see Dan, Solel Boneh, 82– 87. Between 1926 and 1929 Yitzhak Sadeh served as the foreman at the Atlit quarry, and after the events of 1929 he was appointed foreman for building the pier at the Haifa port; see Sadeh, Writings, 20.  Eshel, Port of Haifa, 26; Hayam, Ships’ Tales, 74. The Jewish Agency attributed great significance to guaranteeing the Jews’ place in the port’s construction, but did not actively and vigorously work to advance it. The director of the Jewish Agency’s Political Department at the time, Haim Arlosoroff, reports in his journal on a visit to Johnson, a high-ranking official in the Mandate government’s Treasury, who was responsible at the time for the Jewish work at the Haifa. Johnson did not hide his feelings, criticizing the head engineer at the port for not involving enough Jews in the building of the port. He felt that a little while earlier it would have been possible to easily involve some one hundred Jewish workers in cement work, but at the time it would be difficult to fire Arab workers who had already been accepted to do the work. See Arlosoroff, Jerusalem Diary, 12.

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ployed in this field ranged from twenty to thirty.¹²³ In the years that followed, the relative proportion of loading and unloading work given by Pardes to Jews at the port grew, reaching 50 percent of the company’s work on the eve of the new port’s inauguration.¹²⁴ Within the labor at the port, the ratio of Jewish workers during construction was low, though a certain change was evident in the general trend; their relative proportion improved slightly over the years. In late 1931, the state of sea work at the port of Haifa was reported to be split into three segments: (1) porterage at the port, including unloading goods from the boats to the dock and loading them onto train cars or the customs storehouse and vice versa; (2) shipping work, including transferring goods and passengers on boats from the dock to the ship and the reverse; (3) stevedore work, loading goods from the boats on to the ships and unloading them from the ships to the boats. Eight Jews comprised one tenth of the total eighty porters; the other two types of work contained no Jews whatsoever.¹²⁵ By the end of 1931, the number of Jewish porters had risen to sixteen; in prime working seasons, in the winter, when there were more workers—between two hundred and two hundred and fifty Arab porters—the number of Jewish porters rose to between thirty and thirty-five. A contracting firm, Unbrange and Gavavra Marsha, which employed between forty and fifty permanent workers during work season, with another thirty to fifty seasonal workers, focused on stevedore work. It was reported that Mr. Rokach, the director of Pardes, was able to get six or seven Jews in to work with these contractors.¹²⁶ In 1931– 1932, a few Jewish workers from the kibbutzim around Haifa were first able to work at the port.¹²⁷ About six months before the inauguration of the new port, it was reported that the Histadrut had signed a contract with a new contractor, Kamal Abu Zaid, about employing stevedores at the port; the agreement stated that one third of the stevedores employed would be Jews. Jews, it was reported, began to work in shipping for the first time; among the forty to fifty sailors there

 Abba Hushi, undated (likely late 1939), “Avodot ha-Namal,” IV-250-27-2-244, LI, Tel Aviv; Ever-Hadani, Pardes Association, 121– 25.  Pardes Cooperative Association of Citrus Growers, Tel Aviv, to Haim Arlosoroff, The Jewish Agency for Palestine, Jerusalem [in Hebrew], 1 March 1933, S25/2612, CZA, Jerusalem; Abba Hushi, Haifa Workers’ Council, Labor Office, to David Ben-Gurion, Tel Aviv [in Hebrew], 17 January 1933, IV-208-1-608, LI, Tel Aviv.  Abba Hushi, protocol of a meeting of the Executive Committee, Haifa Workers’ Council [in Hebrew], 13 November 1931, IV-250-27-1-622, LI, Tel Aviv.  A. Hushi, Haifa Workers’ Council, Haifa, to the Political Department, Jewish Agency, Jerusalem [in Hebrew], 30 December 1931, S8/2734, CZA, Jerusalem.  Dar, “Joint Jewish-Arab,” 45 – 79. For more on the involvement of kibbutz members in work at the port, see the next chapter.

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were now two or three Jews. In the transfer of passengers, too, one or two Jews worked alongide the dozens of Arabs.¹²⁸

Early Attempts to Purchase Ships and Establish Jewish Shipping Companies From the early Mandate period, attempts were made on the part of private Jewish companies from the Land of Israel to purchase ships and found shipping companies. The Hehalutz, mentioned above, most probably constituted the first attempt to purchase a ship using the Yishuv’s institutional funds, in the early twenties. It operated for two years as a Jewish shipping line, moving passengers and cargo between the Mediterranean’s eastern ports. However, it sank near the shores of Jaffa in 1921, putting an end to the efforts to establish a Jewish shipping company. Later on in the twenties, a number of other attempts were made on the part of Jews to establish shipping companies, but they never reached profitable economic activity. One attempt was made by a group of wealthy American Jews, who bought the President Arthur, a large dual-engine steamship with a capacity of fifteen thousand tons, in 1925. In order to purchase it, the American Palestine Line was founded, and the company’s flag was raised on the ship’s mast before its maiden voyage under new ownership. It was, most probably, the first transatlantic cargo or passenger ship to fly a Jewish flag. On March 12, the ship departed from New York Harbor bound for Haifa. On its deck were 216 passengers, all Jewish, voyaging to the Land of Israel for the inaugural ceremony of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. On March 24 the ship arrived in Haifa. But the company’s end was quick and bitter: the ship took one voyage to Haifa and to Europe and the company was dismantled due to a lack of working capital and insufficient professional knowledge.¹²⁹ Another attempt to purchase a ship and establish a private shipping company is the story of the motorized vessel Gozal (Fledgling), which arrived in the Haifa port in 1927. The boat belonged to the Nesher cement factory, founded by Michael Pollack. Pollack had experience in the field of shipping; he had learned from his father, who had worked in oil transport along the Volga and into central Russia. Pollack understood the importance of maritime transport as an inexpensive and convenient means of transferring goods; he decided to

 Haifa Workers’ Council, Haifa, to M. Sharett, Jewish Agency Executive, Jerusalem [in Hebrew], 5 June 1933, S25/2612, CZA, Jerusalem.  Hayam, Ships’ Tales, 55; Hayam, Sea Routes, 13; Helpern, Revival, 334– 35.

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purchase a ship to move cement to the eastern ports of the Mediterranean. After extensive searches, an appropriate ship—shallow and small—was found; it had transferred bricks from Holland to England. The deck could take two hundred tons, it had a crew of six people, and it flew the British flag and was registered at the Port of London. In 1928, Zeev Hayam was appointed the boat’s skipper.¹³⁰ Nesher’s cement was sold in the eastern basin of the Mediterranean Sea, and the Gozal sailed from Haifa to Cyprus, Alexandria, Tripoli, Tartus, Latakia, Beirut, Port Said, and the Suez. In 1929, with the mounting rioting in Palestine, the sale of cement from the Jewish factory to neighboring Arab countries came to a near complete standstill, and two years later the company’s management decided to sell the Gozal. It was transferred to Italian ownership, sailing for a few more years; in the Second World War, it sank on Italy’s shores.¹³¹ Other shipping companies founded by the early thirties also lasted no longer than two years; their ultimate failure stemmed primarily from a lack of experience in shipping—both in terms of management and financials and in terms of seafaring. The shortage of starting capital and working capital was noticeable, and competition with foreign shipping, with its vast experience, was also a significant factor. No body was able to overcome the shipping companies’ funding and management issues.¹³²

 Zeev Hayam (Volodia Itzkovitz; 1901, Odessa–1977, Haifa) was the lone Jewish cadet among hundreds in Odessa’s maritime academy. He moved to the Land of Israel in 1924 and was one of the founders of the Hashomer Hatzair kibbutz Afikim; he founded the kibbutz’s “Plugat HaYam,” or sea company, a fishing group which operated on the banks of the Yarkon River. In the late twenties, he was accredited as skipper. He did much toward conquering Jewish labor at the Haifa port. When the Tel Aviv port was founded, he was called upon to serve as its first skipper, and worked at the port until the outbreak of the Second World War. During the war, he enlisted in the British navy. He was among the founders of the Palestine Maritime League and the naval academy in Haifa. He was involved in the Zevulun maritime association from the day of its founding. Zeitlin, Forty Years, 27; Y. Shofet, “Zeev Hayam” [in Hebrew], Al Hamishmar, November 15, 1968, 7. For more on Hayam, see Shavit, Goldstein, and Be’er, Biographical Dictionary, 167; Nahshon and Nahshon, “Zeev Hayam.” In his book Home, Assaf Inbari describes Volodia as part of his story of Kibbutz Afikim.  Hayam, Ships’ Tales, 62– 66; Herman, Conquering a Route, 50.  On additional failed attempts to found Jewish shipping companies between 1919 and 1933, see Hayam, Ships’ Tales, 55 – 69, 88 – 89, 93 – 94.

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The First Jewish Fishing Groups Fishing Methods and British Policy on Fishery From the twenties until the mid-thirties, attempts were made to cultivate Jewish fishery. During this period, Palestine had two general types of fishery: sea fishing and lake fishing. The fishery sector was split into three primary types: coastal fishing, light fishing, and deepwater—or trawler—fishing.¹³³ Hundreds of Arab fishermen worked in coastal fishing on a regular basis, using oars and sails rather than motorized vessels, using primarily trawls or cast nets. The fishing area extended between a kilometer and two kilometers from the shore. In the twenties, fishermen employed this method on about four hundred fishing boats; some worked seasonally, in accordance with the fishing season and each season’s opportunities for livelihood. Small, open rowboats, between five and seven meters in length and thirty to forty centimeters in depth, were used. The boats came from a number of anchorages such as Achziv, Acre, or Jaffa—but in reality this type of fishing needed no port. The rowboats moved out to sea and returned to the shore in order to pull the net from there, and the boat was put up on the land after sailing ended. Light fishing first appeared in 1931, and the fishing villages of Mishmar HaYam, Caesarea, Atlit, and Ein Gev began to work using this method in the late thirties, as will be explained in the next chapter.¹³⁴ The first attempt at trawling, made ten to fifteen miles from the coast, was conducted by Maltese fishermen in 1923; they used Italian fishing methods, and the fish was sold in the land’s markets.¹³⁵ Between 1927 and 1931, a first attempt at large-scale deepwater fishing—with the investment of significant capital —was made. Moshe Rosengart brought three motorized trawlers, one with a displacement-capacity of one hundred tons and two smaller ones. A crew of fishermen who hailed from northern lands worked on board, joined by a number of young Jews, inexperienced in the field of fishing. These boats sailed in the Med-

 Schmida and Ben-Ami, “Trawl Fisheries,” 54– 55.  Hornell, Fisheries of Palestine, 38 – 51; Wydra, “Fishing Methods,” in Hanoch, Fishing Settlements, 25 – 26; Ran, “German Immigration,” 42– 43.  The government limited the number of foreign fishermen and their boats due to the protests of Arab fishermen that the Maltese were stealing their livelihood. See A. Bayevsky, “In Rivers and Seas” [in Hebrew], Davar, September 29, 1936, 3; Meir Gurvitz, “The Maritime Awakening” [in Hebrew], Davar, May 19, 1937, 8 – 9; Gelbart, Jews and Seafaring, 73; Helpern, Revival, 299.

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iterranean Sea and the Red Sea.¹³⁶ Rosengart attempted to establish a marketing mechanism, and thus opened special stores of his own at various locations in the country; however, his initiative ultimately failed and he was forced to sell his boats.¹³⁷ In lake fishing, the usual method involved casting nets and standing among the weeds and near the shore, rich in food, to fish tilapia and barbel. In places that could be cleared of seaweed, nets were laid and then pulled in to the shore.¹³⁸ The increase in individual and group fishing activity, the rise in the number of boats, and the attempts made in particular by Jewish fishing groups led to a response on the part of the Mandate government, which embarked on a campaign to instill order and law in the field. British policy and activities regarding fishery in Palestine were at first the purview of the government’s Department of Agriculture, which was responsible for four main fields of activity: the general agricultural sphere—primarily aid to the Arab market and developing the citrus sector; the veterinary world; forestry; and fishing. The Department of Agriculture’s policy in the early years after the First World War was designed to revive agriculture from the war’s ravages, and as such the government revoked the 20 percent tax that the Ottoman Empire had levied on fisheries harvest.¹³⁹ Until 1927, the year in which the government established its fisheries division, the fisheries office functioned as part of the Department of Agriculture, focusing primarily on granting fishing licenses and collecting statistical data. As it had limited funds at its disposal, the fisheries office could not focus on broader development activities and giving concrete assistance to fishermen.¹⁴⁰ The abolition of taxes on fisheries harvest in the early twenties led to an awakening in the sector; however, it also yielded some negative results, including the growth of fishing using poison, explosives, and dense netting that trapped small fish. These developments led the British to publish a detailed Fisheries Ordinance in 1926.¹⁴¹ This ordinance served as an outline for amendments and fisheries ordinances that were published in later years, erecting a framework

 On Rosengart’s attempt and those of other private entrepreneurs to develop the fishery sector on the coast of Aqaba, see Biger and Rubinstein, “Early Attempt.”  Helpern, Revival, 297– 98; Meirovitz, To the Sea, 21– 23. The majority of Jewish activity in trawling took place from the second half of the thirties, as we will see in the next chapter.  Wydra, “Fishing Methods,” in Hanoch, Fishing Settlements, 27– 29.  Reuveny, Administration, 193 – 94; Great Britian, High Commissioner for Palestine, Report, 18. On the revocation of the tax see ha-Iton ha-Rishmi [in Hebrew], September 15, 1920.  N. Tishbi, Secretary of Commerce and Trade, Jerusalem, to Y. H. Farbstein, Jerusalem [in Hebrew], 5 April 1932, S8-1329/I, CZA, Jerusalem; Wydra, Fishing, 21.  “The Fisheries Ordinance, 1926” [in Hebrew], ha-Iton ha-Rishmi, April 16, 1926.

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of control and enforcement in the sector through the issuing of licenses. A license was valid for one year and could not be transferred to another person but rather to a company, on the condition that all of the names of the fishermen were written on it. Fishing with rods from the shore—coastal fishing—needed no license.¹⁴² A licensed fisherman committed with his signature to uphold the laws of fishing in Palestine and to pay a tax of five mils for each kilogram of fish.¹⁴³ Any violation of the fishing laws could incur the confiscation of the license. A person convicted of fishing without a license could be sentenced to up to three months in prison or a fine of fifty pounds or both. The British were harsh with penalties for foreign boats and ships fishing in the land’s waters. A ship could be seized and its crew arrested for violating fishing law—for instance, for not paying customs for hunting fish.¹⁴⁴ Foreign ships were permitted to sell fish only at the ports of Haifa or Jaffa. Due to intensive fishing on the part of Italian ships and others near Palestine’s coast, the high commissioner asked James Hornell, an expert in fishing from Ceylon, to compose a survey of the fishing sources in Palestine. In the report, Hornell suggested augmenting the supervision on fishing and amending the law so that any ship owner found in Palestine’s waters without a license would be fined 500 pounds or imprisoned for six months, with his equipment seized and destroyed.¹⁴⁵ Against the backdrop of the frequent use of dynamite at sea in the twenties and thirties and the difficulty overseeing and controlling the entire coastline in Palestine, the British were also very harsh with the prohibition on using explosives or spreading fish poison. The ordinance stated that anyone found guilty of using dynamite or poison, even if he was in possession of a license, would be imprisoned for three months or fined fifty pounds or both. Hor-

 Hornell, Fisheries of Palestine, 18.  Wydra, Fishing, 21.  Hornell, Fisheries of Palestine, 18.  Ibid., 19. Hornell’s report was the most serious and comprehensive on fishing prepared by the British throughout their rule in Palestine. His recommendations were accepted in many fields related to the fisheries market: the composition of the British fishing division and its location, the change and renewal of the 1926 fisheries ordinance, the cultivation of British fishing in Aqaba, developing fishing methods, issuing licenses, and monitoring the different fishing areas around Palestine throughout the year. For correspondence on these subjects regarding the Hula Lake in the first half of the Mandate era, see Palestine Government, Department for Agriculture and Forests (later, the Department of Agriculture and Fisheries), P-15/3048, Israel State Archives (hereafter: ISA), Jerusalem.

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nell requested even more stringent legislation, with the license being taken from the culprit and not renewed for three years.¹⁴⁶ The Fisheries Ordinance granted the high commissioner extensive authority. He was empowered to revoke laws or change them and to publish amendments preventing the use of fishing methods or activities that might prove harmful to fishery. He also determined the seasons and regions in which catching small fish was prohibited as well as the size of the fish and the size of the netting permitted for use at sea and in lakes. By virtue of his position the commissioner could determine, in effect, anything within the field of fishing; his powers were highlighted in the amended Fisheries Ordinance of 1937.¹⁴⁷ So, for example, High Commissioner John Chancellor wished to protect fish in the country’s lakes during his tenure (1928 – 1931); he issued a fisheries amendment forbidding the use of nets or other barriers to restrict the movement of fish to the river or from it or to the river’s estuary. In the Brid Stream in the Hula, for instance, the fish had to be allowed to enter two thirds of the stream’s length; nets could be laid to catch fish at a distance of two kilometers from the stream’s outlet to the lake.¹⁴⁸ However, in the years 1932– 1936, after Chancellor’s tenure, the governmental fisheries division was closed as a result of a reduced budget, and governmental involvement in fisheries flagged. High Commissioner Arthur Wauchope, who succeeded him, saw the development of this sector as crucial. He reopened the Department of Fisheries in 1936 and charged it with providing aid to fishermen and guiding them in cultivating the sector.¹⁴⁹ British policy and legislation reflected the new governmental atmosphere and the change in attitude toward the field of fishing as they were expressed in the first years of  Hornell, Fisheries of Palestine, 19. Despite the heavier punishments, fishermen continued to make use of dynamite. For example, in 1937, twenty-eight people were arrested and sentenced for the use of explosive materials or poison. See Colonial Office, 1937, 275 as well as Bodenheimer’s warning that poisoning and use of dynamite and other invalid forms of fishing would exact a heavy price on the future of fishing in the country: Bodenheimer, Animal Life, 432.  “Fisheries Ordinance of 1937” [in Hebrew], ha-Iton ha-Rishmi, February 18, 1937, 86 – 89; “Amendment 2 to the 1937 Fishing Ordinance” [in Hebrew], ha-Iton ha-Rishmi, June 10, 1937, 445 – 46. On the conditions surrounding this ordinance and the shifts that took place in Palestine in fishing in the second half of the thirties, see the next chapter.  Hornell, Fisheries of Palestine, 35 – 36; Bodenheimer, Animal Life, 456; Saeb Salam, Director of the Syrian-Ottoman Agricultural Company, to the chief fisheries officer, Tiberias, 21 June 1933, P/320/366, ISA, Jerusalem.  This, it seems, took place against the backdrop of the awakening felt in the land in the midthirties regarding the sea in general and fishing in particular and as a result of the closing of the Jaffa port to Jews with the onset of rioting in 1936 – 1939, the resulting establishment of the Tel Aviv port, and the founding of the Jewish Agency’s maritime division at the time. For more on this, see “On the Chances of Fishing in Our Land” [in Hebrew], Haaretz, February, 23, 1938, 3.

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their rule. At this time, Jewish fishing groups had been attempting to work on the land’s shores—the efforts that had begun in the early twenties were growing.

The First Jewish Fishing Groups In the early Mandate years, some six hundred fishermen worked on the shores of the Mediterranean, Hula, Kinneret, and Jordan. Of these, less than twenty were Jews, and nearly all of them fished in the Kinneret. Moreover, the livelihood of most of the Jewish fishermen was not from fishing alone; they worked in other jobs as well, especially in the off seasons.¹⁵⁰ With the arrival of the British, new conditions formed for cultivating Jewish fishery. In the early twenties, Nahum Tishbi, secretary of the Zionist Executive’s Department of Trade and Industry, claimed that fostering Jewish fisheries was a crucial national interest, and that it was important that as many Jews as possible specialize in fishing, and as soon as possible. Tishbi was one of the first people in the national Jewish establishment to identify the national potential in the Jews gaining a hold on the sea, and in fishing in particular. He explained this by noting that fishing was no less important than industry or other agricultural sectors, and that increasing fishing activities would lead to a decrease in import and reduced prices in the sector. Equally important in his eyes was the national dimension—the land’s long coastline meant great potential for the transfer of goods and passengers by sea, but at that time sea transport was in the hands of non-Jews only. Tishbi was certain that the Yishuv’s future development of the country would lead to increased sea traffic—thus specializing in the different maritime professions, including fishing, would be crucial to the Jewish national efforts.¹⁵¹ In the first half of the twenties, a number of Jewish fishing groups were founded on the shores of the Mediterranean. One of the first groups was comprised of fishermen who had been soldiers in the Jewish Legion’s American bat-

 Report on the status of fishing in the Land of Israel to the “Palestine Office” in Berlin [in Hebrew], 11 September 1921, S8/2036, CZA, Jerusalem; N. Tishbi, Secretary of the Department of Trade and Industry, Jerusalem, to A. Rabinu, Caesarea [in Hebrew], 30 January 1923, S8/1326 – 2, CZA, Jerusalem. Fisheries’ harvest from the land’s shores in the early Mandate period was noticeably low relative to the other fishing regions around the world: the number of fresh fish harvested on the shores of the land was three hundred grams per capita on average annually, compared with sixty kilograms average per capita in Japan, fifty kilograms per capita on average in Britain, and thirty-five in Egypt.  N. Tishbi, Jerusalem, to the Zionist Organization, Salonica [in Hebrew], 6 December 1922, S8/1326 – 2, CZA, Jerusalem.

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talion. As discharged soldiers, they requested financial aid from the Zionist Commission. Their request was granted, and in 1920 they settled on the Atlit shore and began to work in fishery. However, their inexperience doomed them to failure; much money and energy was wasted.¹⁵² This failure, it appears, was one of the reasons that the national institutions did not grant requests for support from other fishing groups founded in the twenties.¹⁵³ Aside from the discharged soldiers, a number of private fishing groups were active for short periods of time: another group in Atlit (from 1921), two in Acre— one, Hakovesh, a group that came from Ochakov in southern Russia, and the other from Salonica—as well as an additional group of Salonicans in Haifa.¹⁵⁴ Two other groups with cooperative ideologies settled in Tel Aviv. The first Tel Aviv group were the members of Gdud HaAvoda (the work and defense battalion), a group founded in 1924 that built itself cabins on the shoreline on Yarkon Street. The group fished and worked in building and paving Tel Aviv’s roads, but, due to internal ideological disagreements, was disbanded in 1927. The second was a group of fishermen from the Russian Hashomer Hatzair, who came in 1926 and first settled next to Rosh Pina and Beit Gan. Some wished to establish a sea company, and they settled in Tel Aviv near the Yarkon estuary. This group was occupied, among other things, with fishing, renting boats for sailing on the Yarkon, and transporting coarse sand. Near the end of 1928, the group members moved to Lake Kinneret, and eventually established Kibbutz Afikim.¹⁵⁵ A more detailed look at the chronicles of two groups in Acre—the Salonican group and Hakovesh—demonstrates the plethora of difficulties that were the lot of the various fishing groups at that time. In Salonica, a large Jewish community flourished from the late sixteenth century, working in sea professions as sailors,

 Helpern, Revival, 281.  Of the activities of the group in Atlit little is known; they were mostly immigrants from Poland and Russia. The group organizers were Lifshitz and Zubov, who were able to enlist the aid of the Zionist Executive. They were given good nets, but three of the boats they received were not suited to their work. For nearly a year, the group struggled with a lack of professional experience as well as marketing problems. Many of the group members fell ill with a fever; the group eventually broke up. Porat, Fishery Pioneers, 281.  Reports on most of the fishing groups are sparse. There were, it seems, a number of other fishing groups active in the early twenties, including the Gershov group and the Rubinstein-Fliner group, both active in Tel Aviv in 1921; a group of foreigners from the Caspian Sea, active in Caesarea in 1924; and the Hepsibah group, active in 1925. See Gelbart, Jews and Seafaring, 72; Helpern, Revival, 281– 82; Porat, Fishery Pioneers, 25 – 32.  Porat, Fishery Pioneers, 28 – 29.

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boatowners, port workers, stevedores, and fishermen.¹⁵⁶ The next chapter will depict the circumstances behind the arrival of the Salonican Jews and their role in establishing the Jewish hold on the land’s ports, primarily from the beginning of the thirties. Here we will suffice with noting that in the early years after the First World War the Jewish population in the city faced an economic crisis, and as a result many members looked for ways to leave Salonica and seek their fortunes elsewhere. The willingness of many of the fishermen to leave their homes was consistent with the step being taken by the Palestine Office in Salonica in partnership with the Zionist leadership in the Land of Israel, whose goal was to bring more Salonican fishing groups to the country.¹⁵⁷ The first Salonican pioneer was fisherman Shalom Ashkenazi, sent to the Land of Israel in 1919 by the central bureau of Greece’s Zionist Federation in Salonica.¹⁵⁸ His arrival breathed hope of establishing fishery as a profession in the

 The role of Salonica’s Jews in shipping and sea transport was significant, as it was in other economic sectors. As evidence, on Sabbath and Jewish holidays, the port’s gates were closed and commercial activity in it and around it stopped. See Burla, “Salonican Jews,” in Recanati, Memoir of Salonica. Rachel Yannait Ben-Zvi reports that in the spring of 1908, on her way to the Land of Israel, she arrived in Salonica aboard a ship for the first time. When she debarked at the Salonica port, she felt that she had arrived at the gates of Zion: nearly all of the workers at the port —sailors, porters, and stevedores—were Jewish, and inside the port the customs officials and clerks were also all members of the tribe. See Ben-Zvi, “Visit to Salonica,” in Recanati, Memoir of Salonica. David Ben-Gurion spent a little over a year (1912– 1913) in Salonica, reporting that “When I lived there, I saw that is was the most Jewish city in the world, and in the Land of Israel there was no Jewish city like it (in those days) because all of the work in the city—in factories and workshops and even at the port—was done by Jewish workers, something that was not the case at the time even in the Land of Israel. A ship could not depart on the Sabbath because the Jewish workers at the port did not work on the Sabbath”; see Ben-Gurion, “Jewish City,” in Recanati, Memoir of Salonica. On the factors pushing Salonican Jewish fishermen to migrate from their birthplace and settle on the shores of Acre in the mid-twenties and work in fishing and why the attempt ultimately failed, see Srougo, “Bay of Thessaloniki.” In the next chapter, we will expand on the Salonica community and its maritime background.  Molho, Salonican Seafarers, 36 – 40; Recanati, Memoir of Salonica; Palestine Office, Salonica, “Tazḳir al ha-Dayagim ha-Yehudim mi-Saloniḳi—Reshamim Klaliim,” 15 October 1924, S22/ 192, CZA, Jerusalem.  Uziel, “Conquest,” in Newman, Eshel, Pomrock, and Raviv, Israel and the Sea, 265. In letters written by Yitzhak Ben-Zvi to Menachem Ussishkin in 1913 – 1914, in which he described his stay in Salonica, we find that negotiations for bringing Salonican Jewish sailors to the Land of Israel began before the First World War. On February 11, 1914, Ben-Zvi wrote to Ussishkin that he had left Salonica the day before after agreeing with two sailors, Mordechai Ashkenazi and Avraham Manu, that they would come to Jaffa. At the end of the letter, he writes: “My idea is carrying me far—after the two first sailors are set, they can serve as teachers for some of our young people, if people of spirit and energy are found to volunteer to work as sailors and seamen. This

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land. He settled first in Jaffa where he was helped by Zvi Lieberman, the director of Hapoel Hatzair’s employment bureau. But from the start, difficulties abounded: Ashkenazi spoke only Ladino, and contact with him was awkward; the Arabs in Jaffa made his life miserable. It was decided that he would be moved to Atlit, so that the fishing group there could learn the secrets of the trade from him. But in Atlit, too, he was unlucky; he took ill with a fever. He was brought to the Hadassah hospital in Jerusalem, and with his release he chose to return to Salonica. Despite the fact that Ashkenazi was unsuccessful, the recognition that a fishing group must be formed and brought to the Land of Israel emerged.¹⁵⁹ As a result of a meeting held between Yitzhak Elbo, secretary of the Zionist Federation in Salonica, and Nahum Tishbi, secretary of the Zionist Executive’s Department of Trade and Industry in the Land of Israel, the road was paved for a preliminary tour of two representatives from a fishing group in Salonica, which was held in the Land of Israel in September 1924. At the end of the tour, both—from the Bracha and Gatineau families—chose to settle in the coastal region between Atlit and Acre, where there was a smaller number of rocks and the wave current was moderate.¹⁶⁰ In early 1925, some forty-five members of the Bracha and Gatineau families settled in Acre—the first large-scale, organized immigration of sea workers from Salonica to the Land of Israel. One year later, in January 1926, a group of Jewish fishermen from Ochakov, southern Russia—known as the Hakovesh group—settled on Acre’s coast.¹⁶¹ But despite the hostile Arab environment and the daily difficulties, it was the ideological disparities and the lack of social and cultural adaptation between the two groups that led to them not uniting into one joint fishing group.¹⁶²

depends solely on the people—if such young people are found, people who want to devote themselves to this profession. But this can only be spoken about seriously after these first pioneers from Salonica are organized.” See Ben-Zvi, Road Signs, 97.  M. Gurvitz, Land of Israel Water Commission, Jaffa, to Dr. Eliash, Zionist Commission, Jerusalem [in Hebrew], 5 August 1920, S30/2575, CZA, Jerusalem; Molho, Salonican Seafarers, 27; Livneh, Third Aliyah, 116 – 17; Meir Gurvitz, “The Maritime Awakening” [in Hebrew], Davar, May 19, 1937, 8 – 9.  Molho, Salonican Seafarers, 33 – 48; Srougo, “Bay of Thessaloniki,” nn. 103 – 8.  This group consisted of eleven people; Contract between the Zionist Executive in the Land of Israel and the group of fishermen from Ochakov, southern Russia [in Hebrew], 18 January 1926, S9/1867, CZA, Jerusalem.  For more on the lack of cohesion between the two groups, see Srougo, “Bay of Thessaloniki.”

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In the first weeks of the Salonican fishermen’s stay, they appeared to be succeeding.¹⁶³ It later became clear, however, that conditions were very difficult, that the hardships were great, and that the fishermen suffered from hunger, with their physical and mental states declining.¹⁶⁴ This stemmed primarily from the climate, in which the fishing season on the shores was brief—possible only comprising the winter months. Those fishing for their livelihood were soon left with no sources of income in the remaining months of the year.¹⁶⁵ An additional claim was that the Zionist Executive’s reticence to keep Ussishkin’s promise to establish a farm to supplement the fishermen’s income meant there was no hope for Jewish fishery attempts in Acre at that time.¹⁶⁶ The events of 1929, which augmented Arab hostility toward the Jewish fishermen, and the shaky defense situation, finally terminated Jewish attempts at fishing in Acre, and the Salonicans and others who remained there chose to depart for Haifa or Tel Aviv. The Hakovesh group, too, despaired of its attempts to hold Acre’s shores, its last fish-

 When visiting the Land of Israel as a representative of the Jewish community in Salonica for the inaugural ceremony of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem in 1925, Avraham Rakanti, editor of the French weekly Pro-Israel, interviewed Tishbi about the development of the fishing groups’ work. Tishbi stated that the settlement of fifteen families of Salonican fishermen had produced excellent results and was making great waves in the Jewish world, despite the fact that the fishermen had arrived only six weeks prior. Recanati, Memoir of Salonica, 436.  Gatineau, on behalf of the Jewish Salonican fishermen in Acre, to the Zionist Executive’s Department of Trade and Industry, central bureau of the Jewish National Fund, Jerusalem [in Hebrew], 5 July 1926, S8/1327/1, CZA, Jerusalem.  Uziel, “Jewish Fishermen.” Tishbi described a reality in which the Salonicans objected to any change or innovation in the way they worked, and considered all other work to be beneath them. This, in his opinion, was the primary reason for the Salonicans’ utter idleness during the summer months, when they were not able to fish. However, the Hakovesh group, Tishbi felt, were typical pioneers, who when unable to fish took on any other job, simple or unskilled as it might be. A large number of Hakovesh members worked in Hadera, Zichron Yaakov, and other colonies in the off seasons and took on other odd jobs. See: Report of H. Nahum Tishbi on the current state of Salonican and Ochakov “Hakovesh” fishing groups in Acre and recommendations about establishing these groups, Jerusalem [in Hebrew], 12 August 1927, S8/1328/3, CZA, Jerusalem.  Menachem Ussishkin, head of the Jewish National Fund, visited Salonica in May 1924 before the immigration, promising the settlers a fishing colony that would be a supportive economic framework. However, because of the Fund’s poor state at that time, the lack of land suitable for settling in the Acre region, and primarily the beliefs of many in the Zionist Executive a that agricultural settlement should be prioritized over maritime settlement, the establishment of fishing colonies was delayed until the second half of the thirties. N. Tishbi, Secretary of Trade and Industry of the Zionist Executive in the Land of Israel, Jerusalem, to the central bureau of the Jewish National Fund [in Hebrew], 11 December 1925, S8/1327/1, CZA, Jerusalem.

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ermen leaving before the rioting began; some found work in farming colonies in the summer months.¹⁶⁷ Jewish Salonican seamen would once again receive attention in the summer of 1933, on the eve of the inauguration of Haifa’s port. When it became clear that there were no workers in the Land of Israel who could properly undertake the demanding tasks of work at the ports, the immigration of Salonican laborers began again, so that they could be employed in the ports of Haifa and Jaffa. These workers, like their predecessors, experienced both professional success and social and economic difficulties. Nonetheless, unlike the situation in Acre, in the Haifa port the Salonicans ultimately successfully assimilated in port work, and later even played a central role in the building of the Tel Aviv port.

Jewish Fishing on Lake Kinneret in the Twenties: Dreams and Disappointment In contrast with the meager information and research about the fishing groups on the Mediterranean in the twenties, research about Jewish fishing on Lake Kinneret at the same time is relatively rich, making it possible to reconstruct and conduct a detailed analysis about the evolution of fishing at the lake.¹⁶⁸ It appears that many generations of fishermen on Lake Kinneret were residents of Tiberias, mostly Muslim with a minority of Christians and Jews. Fishing was the occupation of certain families, passed from father to son.¹⁶⁹ Of the Jewish families in Tiberias that worked in fishing, the well-known ones were Hattab and Azuelos, immigrants from North Africa and Greece, respectively; each had four fishing boats on the lake. These families served as guides for a number of the Jewish fishing groups that arrived at Lake Kinneret from the 1920s.¹⁷⁰

 Report of H. Nahum Tishbi on the current state of Salonican and Ochakov “Hakovesh” fishing groups in Acre and recommendations about establishing these groups, Jerusalem [in Hebrew], 12 August 1927, S8/1328/3, CZA, Jerusalem. The establishment of a farm as supplementary income for the fishermen was a central subject in holding the different fishing groups and, as we will soon see, this farm was one of the important factors leading to the success of different fishing groups established later in the thirties.  This section on Jewish fishing on Lake Kinneret is based for the most part on Cohen-Hattab and Loya, “Local Conflict.”  Masterman, Studies in Galilee, 42.  Schmida, “History of Fishing,” 12– 13; Livneh, Third Aliyah. Gelbart notes that in the years preceding the First World War a group of thirty Spanish Jewish fishermen worked on Lake Kinneret. See Gelbart, Jews and Seafaring, 70.

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The changes that took place in Jewish fishing in Lake Kinneret during the British Mandate period were intertwined with the partnership between the Jewish Goldzweig family and the Christian Arab Houri family in fishing rights at the lake, a partnership that existed for decades. The Houri family was originally from Marjayoun, Lebanon; after clashes with the Druze, the family moved to Safed in the late nineteenth century, and with time gained a place of honor in the city’s Christian population.¹⁷¹ Patriarch Assad El-Houri was one of the Turkish government’s permit-holders in the Safed district and a member of the district’s administrative council, a position that granted him much power. As he was occupied with governmental leases, he leased the permit for fishing in the Hula and Batiha from the district governor, Abed el-Rahan Pasha, in 1910.¹⁷² The Houri family’s business grew and in time conferred great influence upon the family in government circles; the family even paid government officials in order to maintain that influence. The family also took care to preserve their power with the Syrian authorities, and thus was able to maintain its hold on the Batiha to the northeast of the Kinneret, which was abundant with fish.¹⁷³ The Goldzweig family, residents of Safed as well, entered the fish business; in the late nineteenth century, it received the permit from the Turkish governor to fish in Lake Kinneret, in addition to the franchise for fishing in the Hula Lake, which it already possessed. The permit was granted to Meir Goldzweig and he shared the fishing business with his son Shlomo.¹⁷⁴ Under these circumstances, a rivalry developed between the Houri and Goldzweig families. In 1915, the Houri family managed to extract the franchise for fishing on Lake Kinneret from Shlomo Goldzweig for three years; in response, the Jews in Safed boycotted the Houri fish, refusing to purchase them. Three years later, the franchise returned to Shlomo Goldzweig. The Ottoman rulers oversaw the work of the fishermen in Lake Kinneret in practice, collecting—on top of the leasing fees—one fifth of the value of what was fished by the fishermen and their agents, who would pitch tents on the  Harozen, Land of Jordan, 17.  Al-Batiha, “full of sparkling water,” is the Bethsaida valley, northeast of Lake Kinneret. See Gabbai and Gal, Galilee, 238 – 41.  On the relationship between Shehade Houri (the eldest Houri son) and the mufti of Safed, see Report from 24 April 1941 [in Hebrew], 105/226, Haganah Historical Archive (hereafter: HHA), Tel Aviv; Report from 30 October 1941 [in Hebrew], 105/226, 3, HHA, Tel Aviv; The Hula permit— general correspondence, 1939 – 1951 [in Hebrew], 24 April 1941, 579 – 585/4– 9/70, Kfar Giladi Archive, Kfar Giladi; Abbasi, “Safad,” 105 – 6.  Granting fishing rights brought big profits to the Ottoman rulers, and thus they were wont to give them to the highest bidder; they changed hands frequently. See Porat, Fishery Pioneers, 83.

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shores of Tabha, Batiha, and Kursi, the Kinneret’s primary fishing areas.¹⁷⁵ As noted, this practice was terminated by the British at the beginning of the Mandate period.¹⁷⁶ Early in the period of British rule, the Houri and Goldzweig families recognized that the conflict between them was harming them both; they decided that it would be far better to work together and share the permit and control for fishing, first in the Hula Lake and later at Lake Kinneret.¹⁷⁷ Shlomo Goldzweig and Shehade Houri, the eldest son of patriarch Assad al-Houri, established a partnership—60 percent to Houri and 40 percent to Goldzweig—for leasing the fishing franchise, commerce, transport of gravel, and the various contracting businesses. With the Houri family’s extensive holdings and the deepening of the partnership with the Goldzweigs, the partnership’s reach covered all of the fishermen on Lake Kinneret, and, especially in the Batiha, gained significant economic influence; it was, in effect, a monopoly on the part of the two families in the field of fishing rights. One central factor in the partnership between the families was the changes that the British brought to the region, changes that heralded a growth in income from fishing business. There were two causes for this: first, the Yishuv was growing and thus so was the demand for fish, especially in the big cities; second, the development of transportation eased the task of marketing the fish from Lake Kinneret and the other fishing areas to the big cities.¹⁷⁸ The intensifying Houri-Goldzweig partnership was a menace to those in the field, and the partners were not above using any means to protect their rights— even employing violence to prevent fishing not under their auspices. Goldzweig was called “King of the Kinneret”; he was one of those opposed to the Jewish fishing groups trying to gain a hold on Lake Kinneret in the twenties. He viewed Jewish fishing as competition, endangering his absolute hold on fishing at the lake, and did everything in his power to place obstacles in its path.¹⁷⁹ The Arab fishermen received similar treatment from Houri and Goldzweig on Lake Kinneret. The fishermen were made to commit to work only with the  Livneh, Third Aliyah, 111; Porat, Fishery Pioneers, 31– 32, 81– 84.  Shahrai, Tiberias, 72– 73. For more, see Land of Israel Water Association, Water Culture, 4– 5.  Harozen, Land of Jordan, 20; on the fishing partnership in the Hula Lake until 1934, the year in which the Palestine Land Development Company bought the Hula franchise, see the next chapter.  Abbasi, “Safad,” 105.  Nun, Sea of Kinneret, 221– 27; Porat, Fishery Pioneers, 31– 32. For more on the partners’ monopoly over Lake Kinneret, see N. Wydra, head of the Jewish Agency’s maritime department in Haifa, to B.-K. Meirovitz, head of the Jewish Agency’s maritime department, Haifa [in Hebrew], 12 February, 1940, S25/7428, CZA, Jerusalem.

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partners, and were forced to sell all of their fish to them at low prices. In return, they were given daily rations of bread. Arab fishermen took loans from them when they were in distress, and if they could not pay them back, their possessions—nets and boats—were transferred to the partners. Moreover, the partners had fish shops in Tiberias and Tel Aviv, and fish merchants in Tiberias, both Jewish and Arab, were tied to them.¹⁸⁰ The cancellation of the franchise regime, in 1920, ostensibly allowed free reign to fish in Lake Kinneret. Anyone who was issued a personal license for a fee of one half of a pound, and fished using methods approved by the authorities, was allowed to fish in the lake. The result was a large influx of fishermen to the Kinneret; the number of fishermen was constantly on the rise. There was no oversight mechanism; the fishermen used harmful nets that caught small fish, and tussled over good fishing areas. Two years after the cancellation of the franchises, first signs of harm to the fish as a result of excessive fishing began to appear.¹⁸¹ Despite the regime’s official termination of the franchises, it should be noted, in effect the Goldzweig-Houri partnership had a decisive impact on fishing at the lake for many years. Between 1920 and 1929, seven groups of Jewish fishermen who were parts of various initiatives—private, sectoral, and national—began to fish at Lake Kinneret, each collapsing after two to three years of struggle and hardship. Records and accounts about the fishing groups is fragmentary, but all share a general picture of difficulty and failure. The attempts to conquer fishing in the lake were begun by a group belonging to the Labor Brigade, whose members began to pave the Tiberias–Tzemah road in the autumn of 1920. The group supplied their comrades with fish, and as long as the brigade’s members were working on the road, the fishing group prospered. However, with the completion of the road, and with no economic support, the group’s condition deteriorated. A number of members left the group; it dis-

 N. Wydra, head of the Jewish Agency’s maritime department in Haifa, to B.-K. Meirovitz, head of the Jewish Agency’s maritime department, Haifa [in Hebrew], 12 February, 1940, S25/ 7428, CZA, Jerusalem; A. Bayevsky, “In Rivers and Seas” [in Hebrew], Davar, September 29, 1936, 3.  Nun, Sea of Kinneret, 226 – 27. The Hornell report on the state of fishing in Lake Kinneret claimed that there was a pronounced reduction and dwindling in the fish in the lakes, as a result of the governmental law mistakenly enacted in 1921 that allowed the use of all nets in the Kinneret. In order to minimize the damage, Hornell recommended a certain size for the nets’ holes— for example, in the Kinneret, no smaller than 12.5 milimeters between knots for the fishing of sardines—and published a list of nets and the size of each as well as the types of fish that one could fish. For more on this, see Loya, “Fisheries Industry,” 25 – 28.

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banded in late 1922.¹⁸² The Labor Brigade was a cooperative pioneering group of workers in the Land of Israel, founded in August 1920 by the followers of Joseph Trumpeldor, veterans of the Hehalutz movement, and the veterans of the Hashomer movement. While it was a sectoral organization—all participants were members of the Histadrut from the very beginning—some of their attempts to fish in the lake might be viewed as the first Jewish institutional attempt to fish in the Kinneret.¹⁸³ The second group, the Lev Group, banded together in 1922 in Kibbutz Degania. Eight members of the group were river fishermen and built themselves simple boats. But this group suffered from a lack of funds and could not work with Goldzweig, who persecuted the group members; it soon fell apart.¹⁸⁴ The third group was Hadag (the Fish), founded in the Migdal colony in 1925 as a private enterprise on the part of Yitzhak Levi, who came from Pinsk, a city in a region abounding with lakes and rivers. Levi established a group of fishermen, purchased two boats, and employed an Arab fisherman as a guide—but he, too, was challenged by Goldzweig and Houri and the group was dismantled two years later.¹⁸⁵ The fourth group was a group from Pinsk that lived in Tiberias; they had immigrated at the initiative of the Palestine Office as a group of fishermen, bringing their equipment with them. The twenty-nine immigrants arrived in Tiberias in early 1926. They attempted to begin their work, but were ultimately defeated by the struggle against Goldzweig and Houri. Only eight months after their arriv-

 N. Tishbi to C. Weizmann, Tel Aviv [in Hebrew], 7 December 1922, S8/1326, CZA, Jerusalem. The group was under the auspices of the labor division of Tiberias’s Hapoel Hatzair, but it was unable to deal with the fishing conditions and the refusal of those holding the fishing permits to allow the group to fish in the richer areas. For more on this group, see Livneh, Third Aliyah, 110 – 11; Nun, Sea of Kinneret, 230 – 34; A. Bayevsky, “In Rivers and Seas” [in Hebrew], Davar, September 29, 1936, 3.  The Labor Brigade (Gdud ha-Avoda) wished to reach its goals—work, defense, cooperative settlement, and building the land—through establishing a general commune of workers in the Land of Israel. The brigade underwent some divisions in 1923 and in 1926, and in 1929 its remaining members joined HaKibbutz HaHameuhad (united kibbutz). For more on the Labor Brigade and its contribution to settlement, see Mann, “Labor Brigade.”  Protocol of the fisheries committee meeting by the urban settlement planning department, organized by the director of the urban settlement department Mr. M. Dizengoff [in Hebrew], 29 December 1926, S8/1329/4, CZA, Jerusalem; A. Bayevsky, “In Rivers and Seas” [in Hebrew], Davar, September 29, 1936, 3.  N. Tishbi to A. Borochov, Jerusalem [in Hebrew], 19 February 1937, S8/1329/II, CZA, Jerusalem.

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al, the group fell apart, and most of the members returned to Poland.¹⁸⁶ The largest group of fishermen brought to the country by the Palestine Office was, in fact, the first national-institutional enterprise to try its hand at fishing on Lake Kinneret. The fifth group was the Yaffe brothers. In reports submitted by the Zionist Executive’s Department of Trade and Industry, the three brothers are described as talented and successful fishermen working on Lake Kinneret at the time. After departing the Kinneret in the late twenties, they continued to fish on the Yarkon and the Tel Aviv coast.¹⁸⁷ The sixth group was the Water Pioneer group, later known as Degania, which was active at the lake in 1926 – 1929. It was led by Yaakov Holzman, another immigrant from Pinsk. This group lasted at the lake as long as it continued to sell its fish to Goldzweig, based on a contract they signed with him. In the breaks between fishing seasons, the group transported gravel; however, with the beginning of work in the power plant in Naharayim, the group disbanded, with most of its members going to work at the plant.¹⁸⁸ The fifth and sixth groups—the Yaffe brothers and Holzman’s group—were both characterized as private enterprise, and did not receive any institutional support. The seventh and final group, active in Lake Kinneret until the riots of 1929, was a political-institutional one—the Hapoel HaMizrachi fishing group. It began with eight members from Haifa’s Hapoel HaMizrachi branch, who organized as a fishing cooperative and lived at the Kinneret colony. After they began to see the fruits of their labor, Goldzweig offered them his regular conditions—selling only to him, at a fixed price which was lower than the market price. The Hapoel HaMizrachi fishermen refused Goldzweig’s conditions; in response, he forbade all other merchants under him from buying from the new group. In their third year, conditions worsened; their living conditions were unbearable, their food was lacking, some of them fell ill with malaria, and finally one of the fishermen (Shlomo Plantovsky) drowned. These hardships broke their spirit, and the group ultimately disbanded.¹⁸⁹

 “They were river and lake fishermen and Goldzweig strangled them…good fellows, not fishermen by psychology, how could they withstand the great spider wholesaler?” This was the description given by Arie Bayevsky, a fisherman from the Labor Brigade, of Goldzweig’s attitude to the group from Pinsk. See A. Bayevsky, “In Rivers and Seas” [in Hebrew], Davar, September 29, 1936, 3.  Nun, Sea of Kinneret, 237; Porat, Fishery Pioneers, 41– 42.  Nun, Sea of Kinneret, 238; Porat, Fishery Pioneers, 42– 44.  For more on the Mizrachi group, see Avneri, “Religious Pioneers,” and sources there.

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The 1929 riots put an end to the first stage in the chronicles of Jewish conquest of fishing at Lake Kinneret, and it only picked up again in 1937, when the first kibbutzim on the shores of the Kinneret were established, opening a new chapter in the history of struggles for fishing rights at the lake. A central arena in the struggle over fishing in Lake Kinneret in the twenties was the area of the Batiha, to the northeast, where the Golan rivers created a delta and laguna abundant in fish. It was the best place in the lake for fishing, and thus was the center of the conflict.¹⁹⁰ However, according to the 1923 border agreement between Britain and France, the northeastern coastal strip of the Kinneret was included in the Mandatory border of Palestine, ten meters from the water line; the Syrians did not have sovereignty there. They did not want the border demarcation to damage the rights of the residents close to the border too much—and, in this case, to damage the Kinneret, because they wished to maintain the status quo.¹⁹¹ One peak of the struggle for fishing rights at the Batiha in the twenties took place in April 1926. In the clash between the fishermen from the Batiha, who worked for Houri and Goldzweig, and fishermen who worked for a Jewish fisherman from Tiberias named Masoud Yaish, shots were fired and two of Yaish’s fisherman—one Circassian and one Bedouin—were killed.¹⁹² The failure of new Jewish fishing groups to keep a hold on the Mediterranean and Lake Kinneret in the twenties stemmed from a number of causes. For these groups, fishing was difficult work that they were unused to, in unfamiliar waters; some were devoid of professional skill and unfamiliar with fish’s characteristics; the marketing and transport conditions were not sufficiently developed; the fishing season was short, comprising the winter and spring alone; in Lake Kinneret, fishermen had to contend with those who controlled the lake,

 N. Tishbi, secretary of the Department of Trade and Industry, Jerusalem, to Eliyahu Rabinu, Caesarea [in Hebrew], 30 January 1923, S8/1326 – 2, CZA, Jerusalem; N. Tishbi, secretary of the Department of Trade and Industry, Jerusalem, to the Palestine Office in Latvia, Riga [in Hebrew], 14 February 1923, S8/1326 – 2, CZA, Jerusalem.  Porat, Fishery Pioneers, 158 – 67; Biger, Land of Many Boundaries, 135 – 52.  N. Tishbi to the Zionist Executive, Jerusalem [in Hebrew], 26 April 1926, S8/1328/2, CZA, Jerusalem. Masoud Yaish was a well-known merchant in Tiberias and it is possible—though no evidence has been found to corroborate this—that respected Arabs from Syria were trying to extract Houri and Goldzweig’s hold on the Batiha franchise through him. When the Yaish group’s boat came to fish, a boat of the veteran franchise holders went out to meet it, opening fire on the Yaish fishermen and killing two, as noted. The shooters’ boat, which had members of the Houri and Goldzweig families on board, returned to Tiberias, and the British police did not take any action, asserting that it took place outside of the Mandate’s borders. See Nun, Sea of Kinneret, 222– 23. However, Nun’s claim does not accord with the fact that the entire lake was under the purview of Palestine’s Mandate government.

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who did everything in their power to prevent their entry into the fishing business there. The Zionist Executive gave only partial aid, and only to some of the groups, by funding the purchase of initial equipment, but there was no clear economic plan about the future of the fishing groups and their firm establishment. The Zionist Executive could not—and had no idea how to—provide aid in times of crisis.¹⁹³ The involvement of sectoral institutions such as the Labor Brigade, and even the national Yishuv institutions such as the Palestine Office, was minimal; they were not empowered to make comprehensive changes to fishing arrangements at the lake. The fish market in the early Mandate years remained, for the most part, in the hands of the Arab fishermen and merchants, and the few Jews occupied with fishing—in Acre and Atlit, for example—were forced to sell their wares to Arab merchants, who monopolized the sector.¹⁹⁴ All of these factors led to the gradual demise of all of the fishing groups who attempted to seize the shores in those years. Furthermore, with the pronounced lack of involvement on the part of the Yishuv’s national institutions in fishing in those days, there was no one who could arrange a fixed work base, a settlement outpost they could rely on, a place for their families to live, and auxiliary livelihood for the fishermen. Eventually a disagreement broke out over the primary reason for the delay in developing the Jewish fishing sector and the failure of the first fishing groups. This disagreement was linked to the ideological battles—rife with tension and ire—taking place in Yishuv society in the Mandate period. Bar-Kochba Meierovitz, who later became the head of the Jewish Agency’s Maritime and Fisheries Department (see next chapter) and represented the establishment by virtue of his position, wanted to remove the responsibility from the national institutes. He claimed that the primary reason was the government’s lack of interest, inasmuch as it did not support the activities of these groups nor take pains to guide them, did not establish piers along the shores, and did not arrange proper mar-

 N. Tishbi to A. Borochov, Jerusalem [in Hebrew], 19 February 1937, S8/1329/2, CZA, Jerusalem.  N. Tishbi, secretary of the Department of Trade and Industry, Jerusalem, to M. Ussishkin, chair of the Jewish National Fund, Jerusalem [in Hebrew], 7 April 1924, S8/1326 – 1, CZA, Jerusalem; N. Tishbi, secretary of the Department of Trade and Industry, Jerusalem, to Yaakov Soloveitchik, vice president of the Palestine Fishing Co. Ltd., Warsaw [in Hebrew], 12 April 1925, S8/ 1326 – 1, CZA, Jerusalem; N. Tishbi, secretary of the Department of Trade and Industry, Jerusalem, to B. Rahuv, Warsaw [in Hebrew], 24 January 1926, S8/1326 – 1, CZA, Jerusalem; Zionist Executive Division for Trade and Industry in the Land of Israel, Jerusalem, “Sḳira al Matsav Ḳevutsot Dayagim bi-Erets Yiśrael,” 20 July 1926, S8/1329/4, CZA, Jerusalem; A. Bayevsky, “In Rivers and Seas” [in Hebrew], Davar, September 29, 1936, 3.

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keting.¹⁹⁵ In contrast, Jeremiah Helpern, a member of the Revisionist movement and one of the founders of Betar’s maritime division, claimed that the main reason for the groups’ failure was not the Mandate government’s policy but the fact that the Zionist institutions in the Land of Israel and abroad showed no interest in Jewish fishing, just as they had shown no interest in the remainder of Jewish seafaring activities.¹⁹⁶ As we will see later on in this volume, the ideological conflicts that arose in Jewish society in the Mandate years had a growing weight on the approach to the sea in the new Zionist settlement in the land. Regardless, and despite the fact that all fishing groups in Lake Kinneret in the twenties failed, these attempts were not for naught. The members of the fishing groups formed the highest echelon of professionals in the field. A significant number of them continued to work in fishing in other areas in the land; some became part of the sector at the lake in later years. Moreover, the Yishuv instititions that were occupied with this garnered some lessons from the experience in the twenties, some of which were applied in the thirties and forties, when Jewish groups renewed their attempts to fish. The failed efforts to hold on to the Kinneret were not isolated from the special significance accorded the lake in the early Zionist settlement—particularly in the Second Aliyah, in the years 1904– 1914. Settlers from the Second Aliyah first inhabited the shores at Havat Kinneret (Kinneret Farm) in 1908, and in 1909 veteran members of that same farm established Kvutzat Degania on the land of Umm Juni, the very first cooperative kibbutz and settlement in the history of Zionism. Lake Kinneret became the object of passion for immigrant pioneers, and the failed fishing attempts, in time, became part of the lake’s ethos. Meanwhile, literary texts’ representation of the Kinneret as sacred in terms that were almost religious became a common occurrence.¹⁹⁷

Early Maritime Organizations and Professional Training The Founding of the Jewish Sailors’ Association Alongside the Jewish foray into work at the ports and the various attempts made in shipping and fishing during the twenties and early thirties, Jewish sailors also made initial efforts to band together in professional organizations. The first of these was in the spring of 1921, when the Jewish Sailors’ Association was

 Meirovitz, To the Sea, 23 – 26.  Helpern, Revival, 277– 78.  Hever, Longed-for Shore, 45 – 82.

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formed; some of its members had immigrated between 1919 and 1921 and some were veterans in the Land of Israel—the group of fishermen from the Caspian Sea, the sailors from the HeHalutz, and some of the fishermen from the Atlit group. There were a total thirty members in the association. The honorary president selected for the organization was Major John, the director of Palestine’s ports, and the group laid out three central goals: (1) organizing work at sea for its members; (2) protecting professional interests; and (3) registering sailors from among the new immigrants. The organization determined that education and training for shipping was an objective, and requested permission to establish a library and hold lectures in order to prepare trainees for work at sea. By the spring of 1925, the organization had seventy members—but that year it disbanded, among other things because the Histadrut refused to recognize it as an independent body, and because it had not accomplished much by way of actual significant activity.¹⁹⁸ In that very year, an attempt was made to revive the sailors’ organization and expand its lines; the Palestine Seamen’s Association was founded, with similar goals. It had 105 members and was led by Captain Arie Bayevsky. The list of members included captains, fishermen, and ship professionals such as sailors, engineers, mechanics, metalworkers, and carpenters. The organization was occupied primarily with having a number of its members give a few lectures—but it ultimately also disbanded within a few months.¹⁹⁹

 This assessment appears in the publication of the organization itself. See Palestine Seamen’s Association, Bulletin no. 1 [in Hebrew], 3 December 1925, pp. 1– 2, S8/1385, CZA, Jerusalem.  Palestine Seamen’s Association, Bulletin no. 1 [in Hebrew], 3 December 1925, p. 4, S8/1385, CZA, Jerusalem. Zeev Hayam, who was a member in the Seamen’s Association and elected its representative in the region of Haifa and the north, reported that the Palestine Communist Party began to stir the pot, hoping to use the association for its own propaganda purposes. Most of the members were opposed, and the Histadrut became involved. The Seamen’s Association committee resigned, and no new committee was selected in its stead, and thus the group disbanded and was closed at the end of 1925; Hayam, Ships’ Tales, 47– 48. An additional attempt to found a professional association for the seamen of a merchant fleet took place a decade later, in late 1936; the Association of Officers and Mechanics of the Palestine Merchant Fleet was established, but its influence was not evident. In 1944, the Haifa Workers’ Council initiated the establishment of the Hebrew Captains, Officers, and Sailors Association, led by Captain Windmiller. It began to be a significant player in Jewish shipping only with the purchase of the Kedmah, the first ship belonging to the national shipping company Zim, which we will discuss in detail in the fifth chapter. See Hayam, Ships’ Tales, 47– 50. On H. R. Windmiller, who died in the prime of his life at age thirty-four, see “In Memory of Windmiller” [in Hebrew], Yam, July 1946, 6. For the failed attempts to create seamen’s organizations at the time, a number of explanations have been given: (1) in contrast with other professions, maritime work does not allow for meetings between members; each ship has its own departure time; (2) the exceptionally difficult

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Maritime Divisions in Sports Associations Foundations for youth maritime training were laid in sports assocations, youth movements, and other organizations, which attempted to foster an affinity to the sea, thereby reinforcing the youth’s national identity. Maritime activity was a component of the body culture and developing physical activity; the muscular seaman was an element of “muscular Judaism”; and maritime sport was part of the effort to create a new type of Jew in the Land of Israel and transform the exilic Jew image. Sports associations served as cover for the youth when they trained for national tasks; in many cases, the Jewish Agency’s missions deviated from the declared goals and athletic activities: reinforcing security and defense of settlements, participating in the efforts to bring immigrants to the land illegally (haapala), and smuggling weapons by sea—there was even a campaign to infuse Yishuv life with the Hebrew language.²⁰⁰ Activities in sports associations were tied to the Jewish national home taking shape in the land, reflected in the formation of the Yishuv’s social and political camps.²⁰¹ Some of the athletic associations that housed maritime sport divisions belonged to the political blocs of the time. The central bloc, which included the General Zionists Party and was based in the urban bourgeouise class, established Maccabi, which set up swimming teams and marine sport squads in the late twenties. Maccabi’s origins were in Jaffa in the year 1906, when Rishon Letzion, the first public gymanistics association, was founded; its activity and membership grew continuously. Within a few years, the Herzliya Gymnasium housed divisions for gymnastics and sport. In 1912, Rishon Letzion was annexed to Maccabi, changing its name to Maccabi Tel Aviv.²⁰² The association’s birth, on the eve

working conditions did not leave the seamen with time to spend on other things; (3) the shipowners did not encourage this type of organizing; (4) there was a lack of “workers’ awareness” on the part of many of the seamen about the advantages of this type of organization, which could represent their interests. All of these factors contributed to the organizations’ lack of success. See Haifa Workers’ Council, Seamen’s Association, Dvar ha-Yamai ha-Ivri, issue no. 1, January 1939, p. 2, V-6-11, LI, Tel Aviv.  So, for example, members of Maccabi and Hapoel assisted the Yishuv during various periods of rioting in the Mandate era, enlisting to keep watch and guard around the country. See Ben Yisrael, “Pure Sports.” For more on the involvement of members of associations and maritime divisions in security and defense of the Yishuv, see the next chapters.  Shapira, “Political History,” 60 – 70, 108 – 32.  The founding meeting of the Maccabi Organization of Athletics and Sports was held in September 1912 in Tel Aviv. In April 1913, the first meeting of delegates convened and elected to join the Jewish gymnastics association, whose center was in Germany. Additional branches of Mac-

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of the First World War, was considered an apex in the approach of the Second Aliyah (1904– 1914) to the physical development of the Land of Israel’s youth, in accordance with the vision of “muscular Judaism.” During the Second Aliyah, a significant shift took place in the attitude to physical culture; in the spirit of the time, Hebrew nationalism was intertwined with challenging physical activity in the land—which could overcome hardship using the new image of the Hebrew hero.²⁰³ In its early days, Maccabi viewed itself an a apolitical national movement, a unifying framework for the different social groups in the Yishuv; as it served the entire nation, it could simultaneously promote physical activity, unite congregations and parties, and revive the national spirit.²⁰⁴ The gymnastics sector had pride of place in the association, but signs of maritime activity existed even in its earliest days; association members learned to sail from Arab fishermen.²⁰⁵ Maccabi was the first to renew activity in the Land of Israel following the First World War, and branches around the country began to open in 1919.²⁰⁶ Maccabi was apparently also the first sports association to open a swimming division, in 1925.²⁰⁷ The marine division made a significant contribution to the cultivation of national pride when, in its first decade, the swimming division participated in competitions organized by the English water sports association, headed by district governor Edward Keith-Roach; it was won most often by Maccabi members. Water sports awareness went even further in 1932, the year of the first Maccabiah Games and the Haifa Port water sports competition; in 1934, Maccabi’s water polo team was invited to an international competition abroad, a game against Neptune, Beirut’s champion team.²⁰⁸ The left-wing labor bloc (the workers’ parties) founded its own central gymnastics organization, Hapoel, a rival of the veteran Maccabi association.²⁰⁹ The

cabi were founded at the time in Jerusalem and Haifa, in colonies, in Beirut, in Damascus, and in Cairo, all of which had Jewish communities. See Harif, Zionism of Muscles, 60 – 70, 108 – 32.  Ben Yisrael, “Pure Sports”; Ben Yisrael, Rule to Practice, 51– 59.  For more on Maccabi around the country in the years before the British conquest, see Yekutieli and Tidhar, Maccabi Album; for an expanded view, Harif, Zionism of Muscles, 126 – 35.  Harif, Zionism of Muscles, 131.  Ibid., 139.  “Training and Sport” [in Hebrew], Yam 1, January 1938, 3.  Ibid. For more on the activities of Maccabi’s swimming and water polo division and its contribution to the evolving nationalist consciousness during the Mandate period, see Yaron, Maccabi Haifa.  During the Third and Fourth Aliyah, the political polarization in the Yishuv increased, with the development of the civic bloc and the identification of Maccabi as belonging to that camp, ultimately leading to the founding of a separate sports association for workers; Kaufman, “Hapoel,” 122 – 23.

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first sport clubs to bear the name Hapoel were founded in Tel Aviv in 1923 and Haifa in 1924, each with a water sports division. In 1926, for example, Hapoel Tel Aviv’s water sports division included sailing, swimming, and games; three hundred members were registered.²¹⁰ The heads of the Histadrut recognized that exercise could promote its own political and ideological goal—as determined by the founding council of Hapoel, its goal was “to create conditions for harmonic cultivation of physical might of Jewish workers in the land.”²¹¹ The left-wing bloc established additional athletic associations; the Sahyan (swimmer) Association and the Dolphin Association were established in Haifa in 1928, and their members came from the Haganah.²¹² The right-wing Revisionist bloc, led by Zeev Jabotinsky, founded the Betar movement; its origins were as a small youth movement in Riga (Latvia) in late 1923. While Maccabi and Hapoel were a priori meant to be athletic associations, Betar was a political youth movement that also established an athletic association. Betar was founded as a national youth movement in Tel Aviv in 1927, affiliated with the Revisionist movement. Betar touted the development of military skills for the conquest of the Land of Israel and protecting the rights of the Jewish nation. In its view, athletic drills did not constitute personal training but  The Histadrut, Culture Committee, Hapoel Athletic Club, Tel Aviv, to the Tel Aviv Municipality [in Hebrew], 25 May 1926, 1367/04– 3880, Tel Aviv-Jaffa Municipal Historical Archive (hereafter: TAA), Tel Aviv. The inaugural year of the Hapoel association is not quite clear. Yarkoni notes that “different sources give different dates and different vessels at the beginning of the association [Hapoel]’s marine activity,” and determines that Hapoel’s sea company began to operate as a sports association in 1927– 1928, but, as we have seen, the date of founding should most probably be placed earlier, in mid-1926. See Yarkoni, The Sea, 13. For accounts from some members of Hapoel’s sea company in Tel Aviv in the twenties and thirties, see Tankus, Hapoel; Avitsur, Yarkon, 126. Over the years the Hapoel sea company became a central factor in organizing the debarking of illegal immigrants arriving by sea. The association also produced naval men who joined the ranks of the Palyam (Palmaḥ Yami, naval Palmach), including two who were prominent in the association from the very beginning: Shmuel Tankus, later, among other things, Hapoel’s coordinator of naval training and commander of the navy in the first half of the fifties, and Katriel Yaffe, later commander of Operation Boatswain. See Eshel, Shmuel Tankus, 14– 15, 43 – 45.  Kaufman, “Hapoel,” 122 – 49; Kaufman, “Zionist Sport Association.” The rivalry between associations in the early years was also based on the fact that those who touted “workers’ sport” presented Maccabi as bourgeoise and competitive, cultivating champions, ideas that were opposed to the idea of sport with a social-national, non-competitive bent, meant to promote social cohesion. For more on the conflicts between Maccabi and Hapoel during the Mandate period, see Harif, Zionism of Muscles, 143 – 48; for accounts of the beginning of the marine section of Hapoel in Tel Aviv, see Ran, Life of the Fleet, 9 – 18.  Hayam, Ships’ Tales, 95; Yarkoni, The Sea, 11. Yarkoni claims that Dolphin was founded in 1931, and then merged with the Scouts movement, becoming the Sea Scouts.

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rather a national means, preparing youth to be warriors; toward that end it promoted cultivating the physical fitness of the movement’s young members through pursuit of useful sports and scouting.²¹³ Betar’s first marine company was founded in the Land of Israel in Tel Aviv in 1927.²¹⁴ In the naval realm, Jabotinsky adopted Captain Jeremiah Helpern’s view. Helpern devised Betar’s naval training and saw instilling the conquest of the sea within Jewish society in general and amongst youth in particular as a central element in reviving the Jewish nation in its land.²¹⁵

Water Sports Associations Aside from the athletic assocations and their marine divisions, with their political affiliations, apolitical sports associations were founded in the twenties. The first was the Scouts, the Land of Israel’s first youth movement, founded in 1919; it established the first water sports body in the land, Tel Aviv Hebrew Sea Scouts, in 1924.²¹⁶ In 1928 Dr. Meir Gurvitz initiated the establishment of a marine training center, and two years later, in October 1930, a youth water sports association was founded, the Zevulun Seafarers Association. Zevulun was created for the sole purpose of promoting water sports; in time, it garnered the greatest number of members of all water sports associations in the land.²¹⁷ The detailed goals of Zevulun were summed up in the following words:

 Peled, “Betar”; Stein-Ashkenazi, Betar, 43 – 66; Reznik, “Betar,” in Kaufman and Harif, Body Culture.  Niv, Battle for Freedom, 1:179; Jeremiah Helpern claims that this company was added to the 41st Battalion of the Jewish Legion founded in the British military, a continuation of the Jewish Legion from the First World War, which were numbered 38, 39, and 40. Later on, the brigade grew, becoming, in 1927, the “first Jewish battalion of ‘Brit Trumpeldor’ [Betar] in the Land of Israel”; Helpern, Revival, 54. For more on Betar’s naval companies, see Yahav, “Jewish Navigation.”  Markovizky, “Forerunner,” 480 – 82.  Tolkowsky, To the Sea, 168; Hayam, Ships’ Tales, 96; Yarkoni, The Sea, 11. Zvi Nishri puts the date of founding water sports in Tel Aviv earlier, stating that in 1918, the Scouts from the Herzliya Gymnasium trained on the Amalia, which was used for rowing and sailing. In his opinion, two years later, in 1920, the first group for maritime education, “Sea Scouts,” was formed, with the Tel Aviv municipality providing it with rescue boats; their activities were rowing and swimming. Zvi Nishri, “Water Sports in Tel Aviv” [in Hebrew], Yediot Iriyat Tel Aviv, December 1933, 102.  Tolkowsky, To the Sea, 169; Hayam, Ships’ Tales, 95; E. Tuvim, “The First Decade of Zevulun Seafarers Members” [in Hebrew], ha-Boḳer, October 25, 1940, 6. There is a disagreement about Zevulun’s origin: Helpern, who is identified with Betar, affiliates Zevulun with the political right, claiming that it was a direct continuation of Betar’s first naval regiment and in effect

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To educate a generation of Hebrew seafarers—sailors, fishermen, and port sailors; to instill the idea of maritime revival amongst all of the nation’s strata; to provide aid to pioneers in Jewish shipping and fishing; to bring Jewish youth closer to water sports and activities; to establish a permanent shore sea line tying together Bat Yam, Tel Aviv, Herzliya, Netanya, Hadera, Atlit, Haifa, Naharia; to build, in places that are distanced from the sea, tunnels, streams, and pools for swimming and rowing; to establish a “sea foundation” to serve as a primary financial mechanism for sea conquest; to develop fishing in the land and support the establishment of a hydrobiological station on the Land of Israel’s coast; to publish professional maritime literature.²¹⁸

Gurvitz aspired to conscript other forces to Zevulun who would support and lead the charge; he drew seamen who could serve as teachers to the new institution, such as Captain Arie Bayevsky and Zeev Hayam; industrialist Haim Leibovitz, who coordinated the financial elements of the association and later became the association’s general director and president; and engineer Emanuel Tuvim, who coordinated the maritime training. Tuvim was a graduate of the St. Petersburg (later Leningrad) Maritime Academy, considered a first-rate professional and pedagogic force in the maritime world. Thanks to these qualities, Tuvim took on running the association and was its living spirit for many years.²¹⁹ Tuvim did not aspire to train commanders but rather deckhands, sai-

the naval arm of the Betar movement. As such, he claims, Zevulun began its activities penniless, without sufficient financial means, with no instructors and none of the necessary equipment, and alienated from the public, and thus while the association was founded in 1928, it began to serve as a youth movement only in early 1931. See Helpern, Revival, 54– 63. Zvi Herman, on the other hand, representing the central, worker stream in the Yishuv, does not note an affiliation between Betar and Zevulun, and Esther Stein-Ashkenazi, in her book, The Betar Youth Movement in Palestine, makes no mention of Zevulun. See, Emanuel Tuvim, “Chapters in the History of Zevulun” [in Hebrew], Davar, October 28, 1940, 4. Another assertion is that Zevulun originated as the maritime activity of the Scouts movement, from which it separated in 1928; Yarkoni, The Sea, 11.  “What Is Zevulun?” [in Hebrew], Newsletter of the Zevulun Seafarers Association, undated, S74/262, CZA, Jerusalem.  Emanuel Tuvim was born in St. Petersburg in 1899, studied mechanical engineering at the Maritime Academy in St. Petersburg, and served as a shipping guide in the Russian navy between 1917 and 1922. In 1922 he moved to the Land of Israel and became a mechanics instructor at the Technion in Haifa. For many years he ran the silicate brick factory in Tel Aviv. He was active in the industrialists’ association, the chair of the engineers’ association in Tel Aviv, and a board member for the industrial bank. Between 1934 and 1942, he founded and ran Palestine Maritime Lloyd. In 1923 he began sailing boats along the country’s coast and training people in sailing. He was one of the founders of the Zevulun Seafarers Association, and its chief for years. He published many articles on seafaring. He was killed in a car accident in Tel Aviv on February 26, 1950. See Thirty-seven Years, 1, 12; Shavit, Goldstein, and Be’er, Biographical Dictionary, 236.

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lors, and boatswains; to this end, he turned to Tel Aviv’s poorer neighborhoods, where he found candidates who dedicated themselves to seafaring.²²⁰ The assemblies and parades that the Zevulun trainees participated in were led by Tuvim through the streets of Tel Aviv; marching in white naval uniforms, the trainees attracted considerable attention, disseminating the idea of sea conquest among the city’s residents. At first, these events were derided as child’s play or much like a Purim holiday fete, but Tuvim would not be deterred, and soon the essential educational message began to draw the Land of Israel’s youth into seafaring and maritime activities.²²¹ The Tel Aviv municipality provided the association with a building and a plot on Yarkon Street, next to the Histadrut building, where the association’s academic classes took place. Most of the assemblies and practical training took place at the boat station that was built on the banks of the Yarkon River. From there, the youth set sail on the open sea in local drills and even for visits to neighboring lands.²²² The association’s national center remained in Tel Aviv throughout the years, and additional branches emerged along the coast in the second half of the thirties, as we will see in the next chapter. Tuvim was in constant contact with the shipping companies in the land, attempting to place Zevulun’s graduates on ships’ decks. Indeed, a new generation of Jewish sailors materialized from Zevulun’s lines in the early thirties, and was accepted for work on the Tel Aviv, the Har Zion, and the Har Carmel on lines between Palestine and Europe. Studies in the association took place twice a week—three hours of academic studies and six hours of sailing on the Yarkon or the sea. The students were also charged with painting, repairing boats and sails, and other tasks. The course was four years long, and graduates received certification as instructors. By 1939, over two thousand graduates had completed studies in Zevulun.²²³ Henrietta Diamond (1876 – 1958), a Herzl devotee and honorary president of the Jewish National Fund and Keren Hayesod in London, tied herself to the as Memorandum on the founding of the maritime academy in Tel Aviv, undated [in Hebrew], 1898/103 – 14 TAA, Tel Aviv. The youth that joined Zevulun were for the most part common people, but there were some whose status gradually increased thanks to their maritime educations, their visits to other lands, and their professional advancement. Many, with time, were given the titles of naval officers or shipmasters.  Yitzhak Zeitlin, “Emanuel Tuvim, of Blessed Memory—Initiator and Realizer” [in Hebrew], ha-Boḳer, March 18, 1951, 2.  Zevulun Seafarers Assocation in Tel Aviv to Tel Aviv municipality administration [in Hebrew], 13 July 1933, 1375/04– 3951, TAA, Tel Aviv; “Zevulun Seafarers Assocation to the Yishuv and Nation,” promotional flyer [in Hebrew], undated, 1375/04– 3951, TAA, Tel Aviv.  Thirty-seven Years, 2.

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Fig. 2: Captain Zeev Hayam and engineer Emmanuel Tuvim (first and third from left) with instructors and sea scouts of the Zevulun Sea Scouts organization on parade in Tel Aviv, April 1, 1935. Photographer: Zoltan Kluger (The National Photo Collection, D843-039)

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Fig. 3: Members of the Zevulun Sea Scouts organization sailing off Tel Aviv, May 1, 1935. Photographer: Zoltan Kluger (The National Photo Collection, D550-052)

sociation’s activities. On her first trip to the Land of Israel, in 1930, Diamond saw that the coast was barren and unlike the shores of northern Europe, which were full of vigorous maritime activity. She noted that there were not sufficient Jewish boats and that the Yishuv was devoted primarily to terrestrial pursuits. Diamond

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took an interest in the association’s activities, volunteered to work on its behalf, and later was appointed its chairperson. For many years Diamond assisted the association, fundraising, opening Zevulun branches in the Land of Israel and abroad, and purchasing equipment.²²⁴ As we will see in the next chapter, Zevulun and other associations expanded their activities in the thirties. The Yishuv’s administration attempted to become the patron of the growing educational element in the maritime activity, and thus the Jewish Agency founded the Palestine Maritime League in 1937, meant to serve, among other things, as an umbrella organization for all of the maritime sports associations active in the Land of Israel at the time. From the onset of the Mandate period, a shift began to take place in the Yishuv’s approach to the sea. One of the first people to take initiative on the subject was Dr. Meir Gurvitz, though it is unclear whether he was attempting to integrate the opposing worker and civic perceptions or moved by opportunistic motives to advance his goals. Gurvitz attempted to procure all possible resources in his efforts. No doubt his desire to develop a Jewish maritime force in the Land of Israel stemmed from his recognition that the sea was one of the human race’s most important life sources. Gurvitz understood the influence of the sea on the political sovereignty of the evolving Jewish settlement in the land; we can also assume that he was aware of the unprecedented development that had taken place in maritime professions from the late nineteenth century, especially the monopoly the superpowers had on shipping and sea routes. First and foremost among these superpowers was Britain—which had just acquired responsibility for Palestine. But ideas for fostering a Zionist maritime culture in the Land of Israel did not accord with the circumstances at the time, following the First World War, when most of the national institutions’ energy and resources was devoted to developing agricultural settlement. Gurvitz’s committee had no chance of effecting a real change in policy and in the institutions’ division of resources. Gurvitz’s commit-

 Henrietta Diamond was able to attract important names to the association: in England, Lady Reading became the international president of Zevulun; in Tel Aviv, Israel Rokach, mayor of Tel Aviv, served as the Zevulun chairperson in the Land of Israel. In the thirties, Diamond founded the fishermen’s school in Gdynia, a port city in Poland. She also founded Zevulun training centers around the world, primarily in England, Poland, the United States, and Canada. Aside from raising funds in these places, she also donated large sums of her own to Zevulun and even left 80,000 pounds in her will for the founding of a maritime school. Thirty-seven Years, 1– 3, 12– 13; Helpern, Revival, 60 – 61; Yitzhak Zeitlin, “Henrietta Diamond— 20 Years of Maritime Activity” [in Hebrew], ha-Boḳer, June 9, 1950, 5.

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tee was significant in its very existence, in the preliminary ideas it raised, and in the attempts made by pioneers to establish an independent Zionist maritime culture in the Land of Israel in the modern age. In reality, these first attempts in the twenties and early thirties to increase and intensify Jewish activity in sea professions were short-lived and only partially successful. For the most part, they were the result of private initiative, bottom-up activity; the Yishuv’s central leadership institutions had almost no involvement in the maritime realm. First seeds were sown for the integration of Jewish workers at the Haifa port, but the majority of Jewish work until the port’s inauguration was in the quarries in Atlit, outside of the port. At the Jaffa port the Arab sailors ruled the roost, organized in strong unions and vigorously opposed to the entry of new workers, Jews in particular; they continued to dominate the port until the outbreak of rioting in 1936. Attempts on the part of Jewish fishermen to become involved in fishing were also not long-lived; this can be attributed to the lack of a settlement outpost on the shores that the fishermen could rely on and to the limited help provided to fishing groups by the central national institutions. In the twenties, the cornerstone was laid for professional organizations of maritime workers, but this, too, was short-lived and revived only years later. The seeds that were sown among the youth in professional maritime training within the maritime associations were small ones, and would only blossom later on. It seems, then, that in the twenties and early thirties—and, in reality, until the inauguration of the Haifa port at the end of 1933—the majority of the Jewish efforts in the various maritime spheres were immature, short-lived, steps that did not ripen at the time into actual activity. However, in the few years that were left before the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939, most of the activity described above had a groundbreaking effect, giving a direction reading for the future in terms of what was desirable—and even possible—en route to the establishment of Jewish maritime independence on the Land of Israel’s shores.

Chapter 3: Expanding Jewish Maritime Activity in the Land of Israel, 1934 – 1939 On the day of the new Haifa port’s inauguration, David Ben-Gurion published the following words in the newspaper Davar: The people of the city’s conquest of the land was a great adventure, the first for our movement. The second adventure, too, is great, and no easier than the first, and it still awaits us —the conquest of the sea…. Without the sea, there is no outlet, no space, no platform for expansion. The Mediterranean Sea is the natural bridge tying our small land to the great world. The sea is an organic, economic, and political part of our land. And it is still nearly empty, nearly free. The force that pushed us from the city to the village pushes us from the land to the sea. The path to the sea is a path to expanding our territory, fortifying our economic base, strengthening our national vigor, reinforcing our political status, departing to the expanse, controlling the forces of nature. The sea opens unlimited horizons to us. The pioneer movement in the Diaspora and abroad, the youth that is immigrating, learning, and working, will find in the sea fertile ground for bold action for heroic yearnings, for renewed ascent. Nautical pioneering squads will form in all coastal cities in the Diaspora; naval academies will train the finest of our youth in sailing theory and water culture—because the land to which they come is the land of the great sea. And the youth in the land, especially those living on the seashore, whether in villages or cities, will see the waves the way the fieldman views clods of earth: a source of life and valor and salvation. In water culture, beginning with water sports and ending with salt works, we will create a new type of Jew who complements and diversifies the type of Jews created in field work. We will remember: this land of ours is fused from soil and water.¹

The inauguration of the port in Haifa undoubtedly led the Yishuv’s central leadership to wonder aloud about the importance of the sea to the settlement enterprise. An analysis of the window of time between the Haifa port’s reopening near the end of 1933 and the outbreak of the Second World War in late 1939—with the closing of the country’s borders and its isolation from the rest of the world—is instructive. It illuminates the awakening of the Yishuv’s institutions to action in the maritime field and the different sea professions at the time, alongside the growing consciousness on the part of the Yishuv about the importance of the sea in the realms of economics, settlement, defense, and politics. These were years of growth and change for Jewish nautical activity: Jewish activity in the Haifa port grew to a great extent, making the Jewish workers the majority. The Tel Aviv port—the first Jewish port in the Land of Israel—was inaugurated.  David Ben-Gurion, “Toward the Sea” [in Hebrew], Davar, October 31, 1933, 7. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110633528-005

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A number of private Jewish shipping companies came to the country, running new shipping lines to and from the land. The Yishuv leadership began to coordinate Jewish activity in the maritime realm and established a number of organizations, foremost the Jewish Agency’s Maritime and Fisheries Department, which stood behind the purchase of fishing boats for training fishermen and providing significant support for the establishment of the first fishing villages along the Mediterranean Sea, Lake Kinneret, and the Hula Lake. Extensive activity took place in formal and informal maritime education, especially in sports and marine associations. Some of these processes occurred against the backdrop of the emerging political struggle, noticeable from the early thirties, between the Revisionist movement and the central Yishuv leadership, as it figured prominently in some of the maritime fields that will be discussed below.

The Haifa Port The Inauguration of the New Haifa Port and the Increase in Jewish Workers The land’s conquest at the end of the First World War by the British Empire, a superpower with a developed maritime tradition, led, as stated, to great changes in the country’s ports. Beginning in the second half of the thirties, Jewish activity focused solely on the ports in Haifa and Tel Aviv. One prominent characteristic of events at the Haifa port was the struggle for jobs, a struggle that was, at its base, sectoral—but that also became part of the increasing national struggle between Jews and Arabs in the land at the time.² In a special Davar supplement dedicated to the port’s inaugural day, Berl Repetur wrote: Many industries tied to the enterprise of the port and sea have not yet been conquered by the Jewish worker, or the weight of Jewish work is not at all perceptible. While there is almost no profession in the Land of Israel’s market in which the Jewish worker is not found, sea professions have remained almost entirely closed to the Jewish worker…. We will have an inaugural day at the Haifa port, a day of reckoning that impels and hastens real action

 One of the prominent expressions for the sectoral struggle with its national tone was the formulation of the declaration of the Nineteenth Zionist Congress in Lucerne in 1935: “The Congress notes the great Zionist import of the activity to integrate the Jewish worker in sea professions and the fortification of status of Jewish work in the port work, expresses its recognition to the Jewish shipping enterprise and sea transport, and sends its blessings to the sea work pioneers”; Zionist Executive, Zionist Congress, 32.

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for the expansion of Jewish work in the different sea professions to raise the value of our settlement in the land.³

With the formal opening of the port, in late October 1933, a sharp upsurge began. Activity at the port grew from year to year, as did the number of workers manning the docks, barges, and warehouses. In 1934, its first year of activity, the scope of cargo passing through the port rose by approximately 70 percent relative to the previous year; manpower rose by approximately 125 percent. The rate of growth continued over the following year. The years 1936 – 1938 saw a certain slowdown as a result of the cessation of immigration and the Arab Revolt, but the amount of cargo exported—primarily citrus fruits—continued to rise and even doubled. Manpower quadrupled itself, from 578 workers in 1931– 1932 to 2,300 workers on the eve of the Second World War, in 1938 – 1939.⁴ With the end of construction and the growing commercial activity at the port, the question of Jewish workers once again arose.⁵ The Haifa Workers’ Council aimed to reach a state in which at least half of the workers in all of the industries at the port were Jews.⁶ Indeed, a look at the numbers of Jews and Arabs employed at the Haifa port between 1931 and 1939 indicates that throughout the thirties the portion of Jewish workers at the port of Haifa constantly and clearly grew both in absolute numbers and in relative proportion. In the early years of the decade, the relative proportion grew gradually; Jews constituted between 10 and 16 percent of the total workers at the port. So, for example, in 1934– 1935 there were 320 Jewish workers at the port and 1,980 Arabs. In the two years preceding the Second World War, there was a leap in the relative proportion of Jews; the number tripled, and they constituted over 50 percent of workers on the eve of the war. The greatest relative growth in the proportion of Jewish workers at the port was recorded immediately before the Arab Revolt, when the indispensability of the Jewish infiltration at the port proved itself; the relative proportion of Jewish workers more than doubled, from 17 percent in the  Berl Repetur, “With the Opening of the Port” [in Hebrew], Davar, October 31, 1933, 10 – 11. For the official program for the inaugural ceremony of the Haifa port, in the presence of the High Commissioner Sir Arthur Wauchope on October 31, 1933, see SS1/3399, CZA, Jerusalem.  Bernstein, “Porters and Stevedores,” 119, table 1: Cargo and workers at the Haifa port, 1930 – 1939, and sources for the table there. As Bernstein explains, the manpower figures were reported for the peak activity season at the port, that is from November of one year until April of the next. The cargo figures were given in thousands of tons according to the total cargo in a full calendar year, from January until the end of December of that year.  D. Hacohen, “Accounts of an Enterprise” [in Hebrew], Davar, October 31, 1933, 10.  Abba Hushi, Haifa Workers’ Council, Labor Bureau, to David Ben-Gurion, Tel Aviv [in Hebrew], 17 January 1933, IV-208-1-608, LI, Tel Aviv.

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Fig. 4: British High Commissioner Arthur Wauchope reviewing an honor guard of British soldiers during the opening ceremony of the Haifa port, October 31, 1933. Photographer: Zoltan Kluger (The National Photo Collection, D836-068)

1935 – 1936 working year to 39 percent in 1936 – 1937. The year 1938 – 1939 was the first in the history of the port to see a majority of Jewish workers: 1,300 of the total 2,300 workers. In other words, some six years after the port opened, the majority of its workers were Jewish.⁷

 Bernstein, “Porters and Stevedores,” 122, table 2, and the table’s sources there. Without precise data about the integration of Jewish workers in each of the port’s professions over the years under discussion, the numbers represent the increase in the number of Jewish workers at the port overall. Later in this chapter, where more precise numbers are given for specific periods

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Table 3.1. Jewish and Arab Workers at Haifa Port, 1931 – 1939 Year

Total

Arabs

Jews

/



/



/

,

/

,

/

,

/

,

/

,

/

,

 ( %)  ( %) , ( %) , ( %) , ( %) , ( %)  ( %) , ( %)

 ( %)  ( %)   %)  ( %)  ( %)  ( %) , ( %) , ( %)

One of the most important factors in the rise in absolute and relative growth of Jewish workers at Haifa’s port was the gradual transfer of citrus export to Jewish workers. Citrus fruit was the leading product in Palestine’s export market: in 1925, it constituted 58 percent of the total export; in 1935, it constituted 87 percent. The peak number of crates—15,265,000—was recorded in 1938/1939, before the outbreak of the Second World War put a stop to export. In light of the centrality of citrus export for Palestine’s total export, which was for the most part in the hands of the Jews, and due to the importance of activity at the port, it was clear that seizing the port work was a central goal of the organized Jewish workforce.⁸ The need for Jewish working hands at the port, hands that would be skilled and able to take on Arab workers, was clear at the time and greatly increased the need to reinforce the Jewish workforce at the port. The solution was found by Abba Hushi, secretary of the Haifa Workers’ Council at the time; he brought kibbutz members to work at the port (see below) as well as Jewish workers from the one port in the world that had a sizeable proportion of Jewish longshoremen— Salonica, Greece. After the fact, it became clear that the lives of the Salonican

of time, more precise data are given about the integration of Jews, divided into the different port professions.  Ibid., 126 – 28; Ever-Hadani, Pardes Association, 125 – 65.

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immigrants were thus saved; it was a city in which almost no Jews survived the Holocaust.

The Salonicans’ Arrival in Haifa The immigrants from Salonica constituted one of the most important groups to take part in the Yishuv’s sea activity during the Mandate period. Members of the large Jewish community, who had worked at sea as sailors, boatowners, port workers, stevedores, and fishermen, had assembled in Salonica since the end of the sixteenth century. In the nineteenth century—especially after the Tanzimât laws, which regulated the lives of the different minorities in the Ottoman Empire—Salonica’s Jews enjoyed ethnic rights and their status was bolstered. Economics and commerce, industry and craft, banking, medicine, and the free professions were almost all in the hands of the city’s Jews. Salonica had groups of Jewish seafarers that determined the life of the port, closed it on the Sabbath and Jewish holidays, and had a near-complete hold on maritime professions.⁹ But the policy changes in the Balkans with the fraying of the Ottoman Empire between 1912 and 1915 led to shockwaves in the Jewish community. In late 1912, during the First Balkan War, Ottoman sovereignty reached its end in Macedonia and Ottoman rule over Salonica ended. In 1917, a great fire erupted in the city, affecting most of the Jewish city’s precincts.¹⁰ Moreover, one of the significant outcomes of the Treaty of Lausanne (1923) was the exchange of population, in which 1.5 million Greeks were expelled to Greece—117,000 of them to Salonica. The arrival of tens of thousands of displaced Greeks in Salonica, and their widespread entry into the city’s workforce—including the sea professions—had a detrimental effect on the status of Jews in the city with regard to the maritime realm and the city’s labor market. The day of rest was moved to Sunday from Saturday, the Jewish custom that had been the norm for many generations. The evolving reality impelled the Jews of Salonica to emigrate, leaving the city, and many tried their luck in other lands.¹¹ The Jewish fishermen, who were at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder in any event, found themselves in economic straits; many sought ways to leave Salonica and find a living elsewhere. The willingness of many Jewish sea workers to leave their city was consistent with the move being promoted by the Palestine Office in Salonica—in cooperation with the

 Quataert, “Salonica,” 311– 14.  Molho, Salonican Seafarers, 12– 16.  Ibid., 36 – 40; Recanati, Memoir of Salonica; Srougo, Jewish Laborers.

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Zionist leadership in the Land of Israel—at the time: to bring port workers from Salonica to the Land of Israel.¹² The Salonicans’ arrival in the Land of Israel in the early thirties signaled the onset of Salonican sea workers settling in Haifa and early Jewish attempts to integrate in port work there. The herald of the new era emerged at the Haifa port in early July 1930 in the form of seven Salonican stevedores and sea workers, sent by the Jewish Agency through David Florentin.¹³ Two weeks later, they received working papers at the port and began loading and unloading cargo—but their activity was not long-lived.¹⁴ At the end of 1931, brothers Yitzhak, David, and Ben-Zion Sarfati immigrated from Salonica to Haifa with their large cargo ships (“manos”). Their experience was not an easy one; the British government piled on bureaucratic obstacles and they faced tremendous opposition on the part of Haifa’s Arab population—both boatowners and those who worked loading and offloading cargo at the port.¹⁵ The port’s captain refused to allow them to bring their boats in to the protected area next to the nearly completed breakwater. As such, and with the struggle for survival, the Sarfati brothers were forced to contact Reno Abu Zaid, the Arab boatowner in Haifa who ruled the port, and they began to work for him as subcontractors. The working conditions were hard and thwarted any possibility of profit and development up front, and in the long run the income the Sarfati brothers saw was scant.¹⁶ Push and pull factors led to a growing stream of Salonican immigrants in the Land of Israel at the time. The Salonican Jews’ state of crisis, which grew in the early thirties, on one hand, and the British port in Haifa’s construction

 Palestine Office, Salonica, “Tazḳir al ha-Dayagim ha-Yehudim mi-Saloniḳi—Reshamim Klaliim,” 15 October 1924, S22/192, CZA, Jerusalem.  Salonica: Mother City, 267; Benvenisti, Salonica, 2:204; Molho, Salonican Seafarers, 24. David Florentin (1874– 1941) was a Jewish journalist, a founder of the Zionist movement in Salonica, and the first Jewish representative from Greece to participate in the World Zionist Congress. He was among the founders and editors of a Ladino weekly, El Avenir (the Future), which later became a daily. He immigrated to the Land of Israel in 1933.  The group evidently did not receive substantive aid from the settling institutions in order to be absorbed in sea work; two Salonicans in Haifa gave it the necessary help. One of these was Yitzhak Elbo, a veteran Salonican immigrant who had settled in Haifa with whose help the group found temporary work in a large shipping company under Greek management. However, the harsh working conditions, harassment on the part of the company’s Arabs, who viewed the Salonicans as competition, and the ultimate economic demise of the company itself led to the group’s deterioration and the return of one of its members to Salonica; Recanati, Memoir of Salonica, 439 – 40.  Molhoa, Salonican Seafarers, 46 – 47; Eshel, Port of Haifa, 39 – 40.  Hayam, Ships’ Tales, 72– 73.

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and the desire to expand Jewish hold on it, on the other, accelerated these processes. In 1931, youth from the National Union of Greece set the Jewish Campbell neighborhood aflame in an event commonly known as the Campbell Riot; it was the first event to directly target the city’s Jewish community. The fire destroyed the homes of many Jews, including fishermen, leaving 250 families homeless.¹⁷ The deteriorating security in Salonica brought a stream of immigrants; from 1933 until 1938, between fifteen and eighteen thousand Salonican Jews arrived in the Land of Israel. Before the arrival of Greek Orthodox refugees from Turkey, in the years 1922– 1923, the Salonican Jews had been the majority and felt secure in their Jewish city; after the Campbell Riot, they constituted only one quarter of the city’s population. In 1935, fifty-three thousand Salonican Jews remained from a population estimated at between seventy and ninety thousand at the beginning of the twentieth century. The Jews who remained in the city were nearly all killed by the Nazis.¹⁸ In September 1931, Baruch Uziel, a Salonican who had arrived in the Land of Israel in 1914, published an article in Haaretz in which he called on the national institutions to take an interest in the goings-on at the emerging Haifa port, recommending that action be taken so that the Arabs would not seize all of the future jobs.¹⁹ A Jewish port in Haifa was necessary for the Yishuv, to his mind, both in order to overcome Arab control of the Jaffa port and for control over the Land of Israel. In his article, Uziel called for the transfer of the Salonican sea workers to the Land of Israel and for giving them a footing in the shipping business. “Conquest of the sea is essential and Salonican Jews are the best, so they must be moved,” he wrote.²⁰ In March 1933, Uziel sent a similar memo to the Committee for Haifa, a committee that included representatives from the Jewish merchants in the city. Uziel’s contact with the committee led to the founding

 Srougo, “Port of Thessaloniki,” 46 – 47.  Kerem, “Salonican Immigration.”  Baruch Uziel (1901– 1977), a former teacher and lawyer, was one of the first members of the community to move to the Land of Israel in the time of Ottoman rule. Over the years prior to the state’s founding, he was active in bringing Jewish port workers from Salonica. He was also among the founders of the HaOved HaTzioni (Zionist Worker) Movement and served on its behalf in the fourth Assembly of Representatives. After the establishment of the state, he continued to work in the Progressive Party and in the Greek Immigrants’ Union. He did much writing, both on the community’s folklore and as a journalist, and served as the head of the Institute for Research of the Jews of Salonica. From 1961 to 1969, Uziel served as a Member of Knesset on behalf of Gahal (Herut Liberals Bloc) and on behalf of the Liberal Party. See Benvenisti, Salonica, 204– 5.  Baruch Uziel, “For a Blessing or an Obstacle (On the Immigration of Salonica’s Jews)” [in Hebrew], Haaretz, September 22, 1931, 3.

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of a Haifa-Salonica Committee, later named the Sea Commission.²¹ Uziel turned to Abba Hushi, then secretary of the Haifa Workers’ Council, to persuade him to join the Sea Commission and sway his opinion about the need to bring Jewish seafarers from Salonica. The commission was composed of three representative bodies: the Haifa Workers’ Council, whose members were Abba Hushi and Berl Repetur; the Zionist Union of Greek Immigrants, whose representatives were Yitzhak Elbo, Morris Raphael, and Baruch Uziel; and delegates from the Committee for Haifa.²² The Sea Commission elected to coordinate all of the different issues related to the immigration of Salonica Jews to Haifa, including appealing to the Palestine Office in Greece in order to select stevedores for immigration and conducting negotiations with Jewish export companies in order to hold jobs for the Salonicans.²³ With the involvement of Moshe Sharett, secretary of the Jewish Agency’s Political Department, the Zionist Organization in Greece was able to organize the immigration of fifteen Salonican stevedores, who arrived at the port of Haifa on February 28, 1933.²⁴ But after their work at the port began, it quickly became clear that the workers were not suited for the task. Apparently, a bribe had been paid to the person compiling the list of immigrants in Greece, and all those who arrived in the country under false pretenses, were, in fact, not stevedores at all.²⁵ The deception caused great disappointment and it was only after much convincing that Abba Hushi agreed to give the Salonican stevedores a second chance; this time, he himself went to Salonica in order to pick the candidates for immigration.²⁶ In late August 1933 Abba Hushi arrived in Salonica, conducted visits to the port, met stevedores at work and home, visited their recreational spots, and got to know their way of life. After carefully examining porters carrying heavy loads on their backs and stevedores unloading ships, who knew the types of work on the ship, Hushi selected one hundred professionals who were suited

 Eshel, Port of Haifa, 40 – 41.  Y. Frischman, “The Sea Commission (The Haifa-Salonica Committee): A Chapter in the History of the Jewish Worker’s Hold on Work in the Haifa Port” [in Hebrew], Yam, August–September 1946, 21– 22; Uziel, “Conquest of the Sea” in Salonica: Mother City, 345 – 50.  Uziel, “Conquest of the Sea,” in Salonica: Mother City, 347; Molho, Salonican Seafarers, 56.  Uziel, “Conquest of the Sea,” in Salonica: Mother City, 348. The small number of immigration visas was apparently a result of—among other things—the Mandate government’s increasingly stringent free immigration regulations and the transfer of more immigration visas to Jews from Germany, in light of the worsening conditions there at the time. See Halamish, Immigration and Absorption Policy, 24– 26.  Molho, Salonican Seafarers, 55 – 56; Eshel, Port of Haifa, 41– 42.  Eshel, Port of Haifa, 42– 43.

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to work at the Haifa port. He spoke with each worker alone, explained the difficulties of work at the port, and had them sign contracts. After seeing the difficult state of the Jews in the city at the time, and the persecution on the part of the government and the Greek port workers, Abba Hushi felt that efforts must be made to get as many porters as possible to the Land of Israel, though not necessarily in port work.²⁷ The number of Salonican immigrants in Haifa in late 1933, four months after the arrival of the first sea laborers, stood at sixty-five, plus their families, an additional two hundred people. The Salonicans were already the majority of the Jewish workers at the port: of the ninety or one hundred Jews working at the port, sixty-five were Salonicans—fifty porters and fifteen stevedores.²⁸ It soon became apparent that it was not only the Salonican porters who successfully competed with the Arab workers; the Jewish worker outdid the Arab worker on every measure. The success was so great that Arab contractors initiated a program for joint business pursuits with the Haifa Workers’ Council on stevedore work at the port.²⁹ It turned out that while a Salonican porter could carry 100 – 150 kilograms —and Abba Hushi claimed that some Salonican porters could carry even 400— hundreds of Arab porters could not even carry half of that weight. The expertise of the Salonicans, their responsibility at work, and their order and discipline surprised everyone.³⁰ At the end of the first year of the Salonican immigration—August 1933 and September 1934—250 immigration permits were sent to Salonica, and between 130 and 150 families came to the Haifa port.³¹ But the working conditions of the Salonican laborers at the port during the first months were extremely dire. They led to a crisis in the relationship between

 Abba Hushi, Haifa Workers’ Council, Haifa, to the Histadrut’s Executive Committee, Tel Aviv [in Hebrew], 18 September 1933, IV-208-1-615, LI, Tel Aviv. Srougo (“Port of Haifa,” 91– 95) details the types of examinations Abba Hushi conducted in Salonica, including specifics and an analysis of the contract each porter had to sign. Srougo determines that the contract’s conditions were similar to the conditions of the Arab workers at the port, including the Hauranites. He claims that Hushi’s understanding at that time was that Jewish conquest of porter work would only be possible if the Salonican worker had the same conditions as the Arab worker.  Abba Hushi, no title or addressee [in Hebrew], 11 December 1933, S25/2611, CZA, Jerusalem.  Haifa Workers’ Council to the Jewish Agency Executive [in Hebrew], 15 November 1933, IV208-1-608, LI, Tel Aviv; Eshel, Port of Haifa, 39 – 47; Biletsky, Creativity and Struggle, 156 – 59.  Abba Hushi, Haifa Workers’ Council, Haifa, to the Jewish Agency Executive, Jerusalem [in Hebrew], 29 January 1934, IV-208-1-608, LI, Tel Aviv. It can be assumed that the number four hundred that Abba Hushi used was an exaggeration for the Jewish Agency and does not reflect the true maximal weight a Salonican worker could carry.  Y. Bechar to Aliyah Department, re: “Poalei ha-Ḥof mi-Śaloniḳi,” 17 October 1934, S25/2611, CZA, Jerusalem.

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the Histadrut and the Salonican workers: the long workdays (twelve to sixteen hours), working seven days a week including the Sabbath, the low wage and the lack of stability, the fact that the Salonicans had large families in an unstable work area that was given to change in activity, and a lack of sufficient support on the part of the Yishuv institutions—all led to a portion of the Salonican workers turning away from the port in favor of different jobs in the city’s market that had higher pay. Others began to organize as independent contracting groups, some familial, as Salonicans had done prior to their immigration. This occupational association undermined the arrangements that the Haifa Workers’ Council wished to stabilize at the port.³² The Salonicans, in making themselves directly available to the shipping agents and private employers, may have damaged the Haifa Workers’ Council’s efforts to firmly entrench itself at the port, but the pioneering mission they were given lacked solutions for their specific needs. Alongside the words of praise for the Salonicans, there were also critiques; their departing the port for easier work at higher pay in the private sector was perceived on the part of the Haifa Workers’ Union, and Abba Hushi at its head, as unacceptable. The Histadrut also criticized the fact that the Salonicans did not teach new workers the sea profession due to their desire to keep sea work solely to themselves.³³ In order to regulate the working relationships in the port as much as possible, the Histadrut initiated the founding of Manof in 1934; 40 percent of the shares were owned by the Histadrut and the remainder were held by individuals.³⁴ The company received the contract for private porter and stevedore jobs, and regularly employed some one hundred workers, who were divided into three groups: two groups worked as porters and the third worked as stevedores. The company lasted until the end of 1935 and was dismantled primarily due to the Salonicans’ departure, which led to a thinning of the pool of permanent workers in the company. In place of Manof, the Histadrut opened a labor bureau

 For a detailed discussion of the Salonicans’ complaints about their working conditions at the port, letters to and from Salonica regarding accusations of ethnic discrimination and deprivation of the Salonican porters at the port and Abba Hushi’s responses to the accusations, and the harmful influence the divided market had on the Salonicans, see Srougo, “Port of Thessaloniki,” 99 – 119.  Haifa Workers’ Council, Histadrut, 446, 450.  Contract between Eliezer Lipson, Mordechai Adler, Theodore Ben-Nahum, David Hacohen, and Abba Hushi, April 15, 1934, for a partnership to be named Manof and registered with the governmental registrar of companies [in Hebrew], IV-208-1-615, LI, Tel Aviv; Abba Hushi, Haifa, undated (most probably near the end of 1939), “Avodot ha-Namal,” IV-250-27-2-244, LI, Tel Aviv.

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at the port, the Port Office.³⁵ In the winter of 1934, the Ogen Cooperative was founded in Haifa with the support of the Histadrut and the Jewish Agency. It was, in effect, a subsidiary of Solel Boneh, occupied with transferring the immigrants from ship to shore using three motorized boats purchased from an Arab port-work contractor.³⁶ An additional dimension of the growing Jewish hold on the port soon after its inauguration was the founding of Palestine Lighterage & Supply in late 1934. The company was founded at the initiative of Zeev Hayam, who served as the director of the governmental maritime division in Haifa during the period of the port’s construction. The company first brought a number of old tugboats and barges from Egypt, providing a response to the Arabs, who had begun to suspend the unloading of Jewish ships arriving at the port, leading to delays in unloading and huge losses. Later, Zeev Hayam helped found the Tel Aviv port, taking a group of Salonican workers from the company in Haifa; within days, Prika was founded and began to unload ships in the Tel Aviv port, as we will see.³⁷ The Salonican workers held an important role in work at the new Haifa port in the early years. They continued to be a dominant force in the Jewish hold on the port in the subsequent years, but the crisis between the Histadrut and the Salonicans in the first months of their work at the port damaged the Haifa Workers’ Council’s efforts to expand its influence and the power of the Jewish worker at the port. Kibbutz members from Haifa and its environs came to the aid of Abba Hushi, and some, as noted, began to work at the port in the early thirties. In contrast with the Salonicans, the kibbutz members were perceived as accepting the authority of the Histadrut; they could help buttress the power of the Haifa Workers’ Council in Haifa generally and at the port in particular. In Abba Hushi’s opinion, the kibbutz members could be counted on to work loyally at the ports, even during times of prosperity outside of the port in the Haifa market—although this was not always the case.³⁸

 The role of the Port Office was to coordinate work at the port in order to minimize dependence on Arab contractors as much as possible. Later on, the Department for Port Work was opened in Solel Boneh, and still later the two bodies were merged into one contracting unit at Solel Boneh. See Eshel, Abba Hushi, 70.  Ran, Ships and Wharf, 48. The Ogen group’s center came from Hapoel’s sea company. When Ogen expanded its activities during the Second World War, a number of members of nearby kibbutzim joined them. See Hayam, Ships’ Tales, 78; Herman, Conquering a Route, 65; N. Wydra, “Maritime Development,” most probably mid-1945, S74/56, CZA, Jerusalem.  Hayam, Ships’ Tales, 75, 78.  Abba Hushi complained more than once to the kibbutzim about the lack of sufficient workers, about the selection of unsuitable people to work at the port, and about not keeping timetables and arriving late to work—all leading to the fact that Arab workers were supplanting

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The Induction of Kibbutz Workers to the Port of Haifa Many kibbutzim set up shop in their early years in Haifa and in the region, where they lived until they could receive the land allocated to them by the Settlement Department. Some members worked temporarily at the port, stopping work at the port if the permanent settlement was located at too great a distance from Haifa. This was the case, for example, for the members who built the kibbutzim of Givat Haim, Ma’abarot, and Ruhama. Other kibbutzim were allocated land in the Zebulun Valley, and the members maintained working relationships with the port, which was perceived as external work that could help the kibbutz sustain itself. These included Yagur, Kfar Masaryk, and Ein HaMifratz; for many years, the port served as a crucial source of income in their economies.³⁹ The Histadrut’s leadership in Haifa felt that in order to cement its strength and to establish the conquest of Jewish work at the port they must enlist a group of kibbutz workers from HaKibbutz HaMeuhad, the HaNoar HaOved (working youth) youth movement, and immigrants living in camps in Haifa and its surroundings. With the help of the kibbutz sea companies, Abba Hushi attempted to correct the ways of the Salonican workers. In a letter sent to the secretariat of HaKibbutz HaMeuhad, he touted the kibbutz work company’s possible contribution in educating other workers at the port: “It is important that they [the Salonicans] have next to them a group that is conscious, that is dedicated and loyal to the Histadrut, that knows the mission they must carry out, and that will succeed in this work and in the joint working life with the Salonicans to influence them and teach them.”⁴⁰ Along with the demand that kibbutzim settle near Haifa and continue to send members to work at the port, an idea began to form: the central concept in establishing kibbutzim would be the conquest of the sea. In September 1935, a first sea conquest group from HaKibbutz HaMeuhad was formed: Plugat HaYam (the sea company).⁴¹ An expression of the motivation of HaKibbutz Hathem. For an example, see A. Hushi to the sea company administration [in Hebrew], 5 October 1936, S11/13, CZA, Jerusalem.  Eshel, Abba Hushi, 68 – 69.  Quoted in Srougo, “Port of Thessaloniki,” 116, according to the Haifa Workers’ Council to the HaKibbutz HaMeuhad secretariat, Ein Harod [in Hebrew], 15 January 1935, 1-‫א‬/8/2, tape 7, Yad Tabenkin Archives, Ramat Efal.  Plugat HaYam was founded in 1929 by graduates of training in Klesiv, Poland, who saw work at sea and ports as their primary role; they established a camp in Kiryat Motzkin with the support of HaKibbutz HaMeuhad. The conditions were bad, and in the early years HaKibbutz HaMeuhad continued to enlist members from its settlements, in particular Yagur, Gvat, and Ashdot Ya’akov. In the winter of 1936 – 1937, more than thirty people were recruited from kibbutzim be-

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Meuhad to incorporate conquest of the sea in its plans and activities was given by Yitzhak Tabenkin: “Our land sits on the sea shore, and the sea is at present devoid of Jews. We will learn how to be seamen, porters, sailors, fishermen, unskilled laborers in the sea and on its shores, transferring exiles to the land. We will be thousands of workers in the sea, people who know all of the professions. And they will conquer the path for Jews to their land.”⁴² By the end of 1935, between twelve and sixteen members of Plugat HaYam had been sent to work at the port; one year after it was founded, the company had more than one hundred members, of which nearly forty worked at the port. From Plugat Hayam’s inception, three central issues stood at its base: the demand for land for the company’s settlement; the need for land for an auxiliary farm, because work at the port and at sea, for the first few years at least, could not sufficiently support the settlers; and the need for the requisite land to be located close to the sea.⁴³ The geographical location of the land and the demand that the place be near the sea became central, expressed in various discussions that took place about the founding of fishing settlements, as we will see below. The vision of kibbutz settlement pertaining to the sea went beyond the Haifa port to sailing on ships and forming a generation of Jewish seafarers; however, until the vision could be realized, the kibbutz members gained experience in maritime work and expanded the Jewish hold on the port.⁴⁴ The kibbutz members’ shift to working in the port was not an obvious one; such professions were at first perceived as inferior, secondary to land-based agricultural farmwork. “Workers volunteered, departed for a new enterprise of conquest—a group whose goal is conquest of maritime training,” the HaKibbutz HaMeuhad newspaper announced, referring to members from Ein Harod. However, the writer continued: “The decision to work at sea was difficult for them, after they had worked in agricultural professions for three years; but when it became clear that there were no others who could replace them and that only an agricultural worker had enough strength and courage, and stability and persistence, for this great longing to HaKibbutz HaMeuhad to help Plugat HaYam; through it, members of HaNoar HaOved also began to work at the port. When attempts were made to shut down the port in 1936, the members of the company began to work as stevedores as well; see Porat, Fishery Pioneers, 63 – 66; Tsur, Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 1:168 – 69; “The Sea Company in the Zevulun Valley” [in Hebrew], Haaretz, June 30, 1940, 3. The group under discussion is Kibbutz Afek, which saw three stations before finally settling in its current location—Plugat HaYam, 1935; Mishmar HaYam, 1939 (from the Tower and Stockade, or Home u-Migdal, settlements); and Afek, 1946.  Yitzhak Tabenkin [in Hebrew], Tsror Mikhtavim 13 (73), 6 November 1936, 8.  Abba Hushi, Haifa Workers’ Council, Haifa, to the Histadrut’s executive committee, Tel Aviv [in Hebrew], 26 July 1936, IV-250-27-2-211, LI, Tel Aviv.  Eshel, Port of Haifa, 48 – 53.

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conquest—they responded to the movement’s call and went.” Work at the port was, then, originally necessitated by the movement’s order. Therefore, “in the clarifying discussion it was emphasized that they will not be departing from agriculture, and that in the future sea work and agricultural work on the coast will be merged in our settlements as well as developing maritime agriculture sectors.”⁴⁵ The kibbutz members’ working conditions were both physically and mentally gruelling, as one Ein Gev member sent to work at the port describes them: “There is, I believe, no platoon whose living conditions are as difficult as those of Plugat HaYam. Nearly all of the people are working at the port in difficult work, without consistent work hours, nearly always finishing work late, going home late in the evening, going to sleep without the physical ability to participate in kibbutz meetings and activities, working on the Sabbath…working often twenty-four hours or more…. What power is there in people who can thus hold up and continue to work in such a manner?”⁴⁶ In the years following the establishment of Plugat HaYam, the kibbutz movements rose to the challenge and settled a number of other platoons in the bay of Haifa: Kvutzat HaYam (later Sdot Yam), Plugat Amal (later Ruhama), Plugat Nir Haim (later Nir Am), HaHotrim, and Sa’ar.⁴⁷ Thus the proportion of Jewish workers at the port—relative to Arab workers—grew, as can be seen above in table 1. The achievements in conquest of work at Haifa’s port were summed up by Abba Hushi in 1936: A few years ago, ship agents, delivery companies, and merchants—and in truth, many of us —did not believe that a ship could depart on time if Jewish workers took care of it. And here we have proven that Jewish stevedores can load tens of thousands of crates of oranges each

 H. Binyamin, “With the Departure of the HaNoar HaOved Maritime Training Group” [in Hebrew], Tsror Mikhtavim 13 (78), 6 November 1936, 9.  N. G., “Information” [in Hebrew], Betelem pamphlet (Kinneret, Ein Gev), 27 January 1939; description of the Arab, Salonican, and kibbutz members working at the port and the atmosphere at the port in literature can be found, for example, in Aharon Megged’s story, “Cargo of Bulls,” which was based on his work as a porter at the Haifa port. See Megged, Sea Wind, 7– 39.  Porat, Fishery Pioneers, 166. Throughout the years, disagreements erupted between the kibbutzim and the labor office of the Haifa Workers’ Union about the relative proportion of the kibbutz in work at the port, as the entry of each kibbutz to work affected, naturally, the relative proportion of the other kibbutzim. The many conflicts that erupted between the different groups of workers led, at the recommendation of Abba Hushi, to the founding of the Port Workers’ Council in late 1938. The council had nineteen members and included representatives of the different groups of porters, stevedores, and sailors. The council was defined as an advisory group to the labor office and was meant to represent their issues before the Haifa Workers’ Council. See Haifa Workers’ Council protocol [in Hebrew], 21 October 1938, IV-250-27-2-700, LI, Tel Aviv.

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day, working day and night, and that the work goes well. There were sectors such as, for example, the loading of heavy burdens and carrying sacks, which the optimists among us did not believe the Jewish worker could become accustomed to. Because how could a Jewish worker know how to carry sacks of 100 or 140 kilograms for eight to ten hours a day on his back? And here we have proven that not only our friends the Salonicans, but also other Jewish workers, “pioneers,” transport on their backs ten to twelve tons of heavy sacks… [We have proven] that there is no job that a Jewish worker cannot do.⁴⁸

Jewish-Arab Worker Relations at the Haifa Port and the Outbreak of the Arab Revolt in 1936 The entry of Jewish workers to the port initially encountered, as noted, opposition on the part of Arab workers, but with time—and primarily with the Salonicans’ arrival—it appears that the Arab workers accepted the Jewish presence at the port. Until the Arab Higher Committee’s declaration of the general strike, relations between Jews and Arabs in Haifa were intact. At the port, organizational and social relations between Jewish and Arab workers existed, through, among other things, the Palestine Labor League.⁴⁹ The general strike, which broke out around the country on April 23, 1936, was meant, in Haifa, to suspend work at the port due to the striking Arab workers. It would thus cut the Yishuv off from its outlet to the sea, preventing crucial import for the Jewish community and export from the land.⁵⁰

 Quoted in Eshel, Abba Hushi, 70. The use Hushi made of the word “pioneers” solely relating to the kibbutz members working at the port, and not the Salonicans who also worked there, may lend additional support to claims of ethnic discrimination voiced by the Salonicans at the time. See above, note 32.  The Palestine Labor League was founded in 1927; its goal was “the uniting of all workers in Palestine regardless of religion, nationality, and race in one alliance for the betterment of their economic, social, and cultural condition”; Hushi, Palestine Labor League, 2. The league’s organizational activity focused primarily on Haifa and its environs. So, for example, in one strike that broke out, a few dozen Arab stevedores at the Haifa port declared a strike against their Arab employers. After declaring the strike, the stevedores turned to the Palestine Labor League’s leadership, which negotiated with the Arab contractors. The contractors were surprised to be approached by Jewish workers as representatives in order to negotiate in the name of the Arab strikers. After the negotiations, the league’s representatives and the secretariat of the Haifa Workers’ Council were able to attain the agreement of the contractors to the strikers’ primary demands: an addition of fifty Palestinian mils to the workers’ daily wage and the return of three of the workers’ leaders to work. See Hushi, Palestine Labor League, 14. For more on the league, see Biletsky, Creativity and Struggle, 220 – 28; Dar, “Joint Jewish-Arab,” 45 – 79.  Biletsky, Creativity and Struggle, 229 – 34.

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The Jaffa port was closed early on in the strike, and the Arab leadership took great pains to shut down the Haifa port as well. Delegations from the Arab Higher Committee came to the port four times, twice with Haj Amin al-Husseini, the committee’s leader, present.⁵¹ However, the strike went nearly unfelt; it was only with external pressure placed on heads of mosques and Arab foremen that Arab workers stopped working at the port for eleven days, between August 9 and August 20, 1936. The peak of the attempts to append the Haifa workers to the great strike was on Saturday, August 8, which was a restless day throughout the city and primarily at the port. Speeches were given and rumors were spread that Arab railroad workers and locomotive drivers who kept working had been caught by nameless people and hanged.⁵² It was the first day of the strike at the Haifa port, the first strike for HaKibbutz HaMeuhad’s Plugat HaYam; it was called “stevedore day.” In place of the company’s usual six to eight regular stevedores, more than forty worked that day at the port. In place of hundreds of Arab workers, 130 Jewish workers unloaded the ships.⁵³ On the next day, Sunday, August 9, when the Arab workers arrived at the port and assembled near the central station, a grenade was lobbed at them. Some of the workers, startled, ran off, but most entered the port and began to work. In the afternoon, the heads of the seamen and stevedores received a message that was formulated as a final warning: it stated that if they did not stop working posthaste, they and their families would be killed. The next day, none of the port’s regular Arab workers turned up for work. The Haifa Workers’ Council enlisted Jewish workers and sent them to the port, and that week all port work was conducted by Jewish workers. Later on, some three hundred Hauranite workers returned to work. They were given permission to sleep at the port so that they would not be injured by the Arabs trying to shut down Arab work there. These workers were joined by some one hundred workers from the Druze villages on the Carmel. Approximately one hundred Egyptian workers helping unload coal also returned to work at the port. Later on, the Arabs appealed to the Haifa Workers’ Council asking for aid to return to work. The next day, Tuesday, August 11, they began to gradually return to the port and work was ultimately restored.⁵⁴ The port itself was not shut down for even one day, and work continued throughout in the hands of Jewish workers—Salonicans, HaKibbutz HaHaMeuhad’s Plugat HaYam, and groups of workers organized by the Haifa Workers’ Council.⁵⁵     

Hushi, Palestine Labor League, 23. Biletsky, Creativity and Struggle, 229 – 34. Tsror Mikhtavim 3 (68) [in Hebrew], 27 August 1936, 16. Biletsky, Creativity and Struggle, 229 – 34. Ibid. Tsur, Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 1:190, 199 – 202.

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The efforts of the Arab Higher Committee to incapacitate the port and life in Haifa were a failure. It remained a “huge gap in the wall created by the strike,”⁵⁶ and in truth the effect that the revolt had on work at the port was minimal.⁵⁷ Additional efforts on the part of the Arab leadership to undermine the stability of the port were made a few months later in the context of the Peel Commission, which met under British auspices after the rioting broke out. In order to form its recommendations, the commission held visits around the country, arriving in Haifa to visit the port as well. In the opinion of Abba Hushi, Arab leadership applied pressure to the Arabs at the port; during the visit, special arrangements were made to emphasize the “dispossession” of the Arabs and the Jews’ domination. While the commission was visiting, the Arab workers were all organized in faraway work spaces at the port, and on the platform and in the place where the delegation walked only Jewish workers remained, leaving the possible impression that it had been “Judaized.” But in truth there were at least 800 Arab workers and 650 Jewish workers at the port on that day. Based on his sources among the Arab workers and contractors, Hushi claimed that the Arab Higher Committee pressured the contractors, stevedores, and seamen to submit memoranda to the royal committee in which they complained of dispossession and the infiltration of Jewish workers to the port in their stead.⁵⁸ Why the Arab population of Haifa—including its port workers—did not support the Arab Higher Committee’s policy and join the strike is something that might be answered by a memo written by Abba Hushi at the time. According to Hushi, during the 118 days of the Arab Higher Committee’s general strike there were thousands of Arab workers and employers in Haifa who were subject to incitement on the part of the Arab leadership, the purpose of which was to motivate the Arab workers to strike. However, Jewish and Arab workers continued working in most places in friendly and peaceful relations that had been built over many years of joint work, and there was not even one case of conflict between workers at the time. It was only with the arrival of the external leaders that the opposition of the Arab workers—who did not receive protection from the authorities—was broken for a brief time, even though many of them wanted to keep working. Nonetheless, a significant number of the Arab workers remained loyal to the Palestine Labor League. The Histadrut continued its efforts to provide

 Avigur et al, Hagana 2:2:641; for more on the Arab Revolt in Haifa, see also 675 – 76, 801, 812, 826 – 30.  Cnaan, Palestinian Resistance, 91, 100.  Abba Hushi, Haifa, to Moshe Sharett, Jerusalem [in Hebrew], 23 November 1936, IV-250-27-5100, LI, Tel Aviv.

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a workforce for the places left by the Arab workers.⁵⁹ So the work invested by Arab workers at the port, the very existence of great numbers of Jews in all elements of port work, the ties that developed over years between Jews and Arabs, the information activities, and the years of organization on the part of the Haifa Workers’ Council and the Palestine Labor League’s leadership were the reason, in Hushi’s opinion, for the failure of the Arab leaders; the efforts had deepened the Jews’ hold on the port and it was not even incapacitated for a day throughout the rioting.⁶⁰

Growing Jewish Activity at the Port after the Outbreak of the Arab Revolt With the outbreak of rioting in April 1936, Jaffa’s port, as stated, was closed; Jewish exporters and importers began to transfer goods at the Haifa port through the Haifa Workers’ Council. Under these new circumstances, the council appealed to the citrus fruit exporters, asking to receive full responsibility for all fruit deliveries from Palestine that passed through the port. The exporting companies agreed —a fact that further demonstrates the council’s power and its central position at the port—and in 1937– 1938, more than 90 percent of citrus shipments went through Haifa’s port.⁶¹ The outbreak of the Arab Revolt also convinced the British to allow the entry of Jews to porterage work in the customs warehouses, which were under governmental administration. For many years, these efforts had seen no fruit—the government refused the requests or imposed conditions that a Jew could clearly not withstand. During those years, the lion’s share of work at the

 Abba Hushi, untitled [in Hebrew], 17 August 1936, IV-250-27-5-1285, LI, Tel Aviv.  Hushi, Palestine Labor League, 23.  Bernstein, “Porters and Stevedores,” 132– 33; in the early days of the Arab Revolt, the Pardes company continued to give work to the Arab company Reno et Abu Zaid. Aharon Rosenfeld, director of Pardes, attests that his company worked with Abu Zaid for sixteen years and was very pleased with their services, and that at the time of the strike in 1936, Abu Zaid refrained from striking, continuing to work despite the danger it posed for him. According to Rosenfeld, Ben-Gurion, Sharett, and Abba Hushi agreed that ties should be maintained and that Reno et Abu Zaid, the largest and most important contractors in the field of stevedoreship in the Haifa port, should still be employed with them. Nahum Tishbi, director of the Department of Trade and Industry at the time, felt differently, contending that in contrast with the Political Department’s opinion, the guiding principle should be bringing Jewish work into the Haifa port full force. In his opinion, “the Political Department will recognize the that the degree of investment of funds and work of Jews at the Haifa port can also influence the port’s future politically.” See N. Tishbi to Dr. Rosenstreich [in Hebrew], 5 November 1937, S8/1394/2, CZA, Jerusalem; Dr. Wydra to Bar-Kochba Meirovitz, Haifa [in Hebrew], 23 November 1937, S74/147, CZA, Jerusalem.

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port in customs porterage was in the hands of the Arab contractors, and after great efforts on the part of the Histadrut and the Jewish Agency the government agreed to give part of the porterage work in the customs house to Jewish workers. On January 15, 1937, the government transferred part of the work to Jewish workers through Solel Boneh for the first time. In the beginning, the difficulties were great and the work backbreaking, but in the first half of 1937 the relative number of Jewish workers in customs porterage grew to 20 percent of all of the customs workers, in contrast with 10 percent at the beginning of the year. The mechanical equipment at their disposal was upgraded and included tractors, carriages, and trucks hired by Solel Boneh on a daily basis. Each year, Solel Boneh employed between 100 and 140 Jewish workers in customs porterage, including Salonicans. The year 1940 saw the peak in the relative number of Jewish workers among the customs porters—50 percent.⁶² The optimization of the porters’ work was one of the central factors allowing for the establishment of Jewish work and its expansion, and it shifted from manual labor in the early twenties to the increasing use of advanced equipment. According to Yitzhak Altuvia, head of the Solel Boneh port division founded in 1936, first right of refusal for optimizing the porterage should be offered to the Salonican workers. They brought the Bimbash, a device made of sacks resembling a saddle. The Bimbash made it possible to load more cargo than the Arab workers tended to load. The Salonicans were even able to ease the work by placing a table on the dock, on which they would put down loads and from which they would load the Bimbash, while the Arab tended to organize piles on the dock, which required greater effort.⁶³ Altuvia was considered the father of mechanical equipment at the port, and helped up the output, ultimately making it possible to raise the daily wage and ease the load on the worker. The continued rioting and instability regarding the availability of the Arab workers led the government to agree, with no other option, to the entry of Solel Boneh to the port; in effect, that allowed for an increase in the number of Jewish workers at the port, a number which continued to rise throughout the years of rioting.⁶⁴ One expression of this came in late summer 1938, when the Haifa Workers’ Council was given 50 percent of the work unloading wood

 Abba Hushi, Haifa, to the Jewish Agency’s Political Department, announcement about the end of negotiations with the government’s customs department and a request for support in purchasing the tools and machines to upgrade work at the port [in Hebrew], 28 December 1936, IV‐250‐27‐2‐244, LI, Tel Aviv; Jewish Agency Maritime Department activity report, Tel Aviv [in Hebrew], 18 January 1937, S11/14/B, CZA, Jerusalem.  Yitzhak Altuvia, Dvar Minhelet Nemal Ḥaifa 49, September 1963, 32 [in Hebrew].  Goren, Berl Repetur, 106 – 7.

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at the port, and in 1939 the council received, for the first time, permission to unload coal at the port. Their previous inability to infiltrate the sector was attributed to the fact that an Arab contractor had been responsible for the job, and would not hire Jews; there was, also, a lack of belief in the power of the Jewish worker to do it before the Salonicans began to work at the port.⁶⁵ The growing Jewish hold on the port in the years of the Arab Revolt had a distinct nationalistic dimension, clearly expressed in the fact that many Jewish port workers displayed a willingness and enthusiasm about helping the Yishuv’s leadership in its national conflict and promoting the Yishuv’s goals, goals linked to transport at the port. The port was used as a crucial gateway to and from the land for the absorption of immigrants and the smuggling of weapons to the Yishuv from the early twenties; with Jewish workers beginning to work at the port, much activity took place in this field.⁶⁶ This activity increased during the years of the Arab Revolt, when the Jaffa port was closed due to the Arab boycott. Thanks to the Jewish workers at the port in Haifa, it was one of the most convenient locations for smuggling arms, which were bought abroad and brought in by the Haganah.⁶⁷ The Jewish port workers even helped unload passenger ships that contained illegal immigrants. The workers would switch clothes with the immigrants, who would return to the shore dressed as dock workers. The real port workers would then stay aboard the ship, leaving only after the border police had departed the port.⁶⁸ The evolution of Jewish work at the Haifa port from the early twenties until the eve of the Second World War demonstrates that the Haifa Workers’ Council became the central Jewish instrument in the evolving standing of the Jewish  The permit was given to the Levant Trade and Shipping Company, founded in Haifa by Jewish merchants in mid-1938. There were a number of exporters of coal for supply to ships in Palestine; one—Paron—was Lebanese, and he was both the longest there and the dominant one, but the majority were Jewish. There were ten or eleven companies or individuals in all. Coal import, which financed dozens of tradesmen’s families and their Arab workers, began to support an additional fifty or sixty families of Jewish workers in 1938, workers who, following the efforts of the Histadrut, were able to infiltrate coal loading and unloading, a profession that for twenty years was the monopoly of the Egyptians and Sudanese. See Our Writer, “In the Haifa Port” [in Hebrew], Haaretz, January 8, 1939, 3; A. Hushi, “Tazkir al Efsharut Pituaḥ Ḥaifa be-Tor Ir Namal,” Haifa, 26 December 1944, ID 726, Haifa Municipal Archives (hereafter: HMA), Haifa.  Berl Repetur attested to this in 1921. When Herbert Samuel closed the land’s gates to immigrants and some found a way to reach the shores of Haifa in any event, Repetur and some other workers rented a boat from the port, loading immigrants on to it at sea and bringing them secretly to the coast. Repetur, who was responsible for his peers working at the port, spent the early twenties smuggling arms there. See Goren, Berl Repetur, 102– 4.  Eshel, Abba Hushi, 57– 66.  Eshel, Port of Haifa, 69 – 70.

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worker at the port. The council officially represented the Histadrut and the Yishuv’s working sector, the Histadrut members—but its activity in reality coincided with the goals of the national institutions, reinforcing the Jewish worker’s role at the biggest and most important port in the land at the time. The days of the Arab Revolt that preceded the war led, to a great extent, to the grounding of Jewish activity at the Haifa port; at their end, the Jewish workers were the majority amongst the port workers. The revolt led, as noted, to the closure of the Jaffa port to Jews—and, a posteriori, to the foundation of the Tel Aviv port, one month after the outbreak of the revolt in 1936. The spirit and daring that accompanied the opening of the Tel Aviv port were grounded in no small measure in the pioneering that was expressed in the entry of Jewish workers to various jobs in the Haifa port and the experience they garnered in those positions. We will see that one significant expression of this was the sending of Salonican professionals from Haifa to Tel Aviv to work and train others at the newly opened port.

The Establishment of the Tel Aviv Port On the occasion of the inauguration of the Tel Aviv port, Itamar Ben-Avi wrote the following: Neither Petah Tikva and Rishon Letzion in the time of the Baron nor the Balfour Declaration during the time of Weizmann, Sokolov, and Brandeis will be determined by future generations as the foundational moment in true sovereignty as a nation and state—it will be, rather, the recent enterprise, the Jewish sea enterprise, in its first port. From there a new age will begin. It and only it will constitute the starting point toward a final goal, because only from it and through it can we continue to expand our land’s inheritance (and not its conquest!) from west to east, instead of east to west as in the days of the land’s first conquest. The west is our foundation, it is our window to the expanses of the entire world and our gateway to the very land we yearn for. What Venice and Genoa did for Italy, and Hamberg and Bremen for German, Copenhagen for Denmark, New York for the United States—Tel Aviv will do with its perfect port for renewing Judah.⁶⁹

Ben-Avi saw the founding of Tel Aviv’s port as a central milestone in the Zionist enterprise at that time. In contrast, scholar Shimon Stern determines that the founding of the Tel Aviv port was a passing episode in the chronicles of the Yishuv in the Land of Israel and in the history of Tel Aviv. An examination of the timeline does indeed show that the port’s activity was short-lived relative to other port cities and other ports: less than four years after its opening, the Sec-

 Ben-Avi, “Our Victory,” in Lutsky, Tel Aviv Port.

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ond World War broke out, and it ceased to serve as a port for five years. It was revived after the war, but closed to traffic with the opening of Ashdod’s port in 1965. Even while it was active, the port had a relatively small scope of transport of goods and its economic weight in Palestine’s maritime trade—especially relative to the Haifa port—was small.⁷⁰ As such, how can the Tel Aviv port be evaluated? Was it an important and significant milestone in the chronicles of the Yishuv, as per Ben-Avi? Or was it a passing episode? A look at the Tel Aviv port’s economic function does indicate a marginal role; however, an examination of its political import and its symbolic status in the Yishuv as well as an evaluation of the significance of its founding for Jewish maritime education and culture developing in the Yishuv in the Mandate era show the tremendous importance of the enterprise in the life of the Yishuv at the time, as we will soon see.

Early Plans for Establishing a Port in Tel Aviv Plans for building a port in the first Jewish city and its transformation to a large port city with shipping and developed maritime trade independent of the Jaffa port were made from time to time in the years prior to the port’s founding. One of the first attempts was the establishment of a dock for anchoring commercial boats in the Yarkon outlet, made in 1913 on the eve of the First World War. Pardes, the company for marketing citrus fruit, stood behind the enterprise, having bought boats and hoping to open an anchorage, but the war, with its outbreak in 1914, hampered the plans.⁷¹ After the war and until the mid-thirties, a number of other plans were made for the establishment of a pier for unloading

 Stern, “Port in Haifa,” in Naor and Ben-Artzi, Haifa, 113 – 34.  The backdrop to this was that Pardes oftentimes saw its fruit rot at the Jaffa port due to frequent delays. This fact, and the desire to increase local industry, prompted Shimon Rokach, the company’s director, to attempt to rectify the situation. He initiated the establishment of a box factory, using eucalyptus wood from Hadera’s eucalyptus forest, owned by the Jewish Colonization Association, and even bought steamboats meant to bring the trees from the Hadera harbor to the factory, which would anchor in the Yarkon on stormy days. An additional plan was to move the citrus fruits from the Petah Tikva orchards, to load them on boats on the Yarkon and bring them directly to ships anchored opposite the Yarkon outlet to the sea, bypassing the Jaffa port. The boats were bought and ready for work, but the war meant that the factory was sold and the boats remained in the Port of Trieste throughout the war. Y. Rokach, “Two Years in the Tel Aviv Port” [in Hebrew], ha-Boḳer, May 19, 1938; Ever-Hadani, Pardes Association, 58. For more on the happenings on the Yarkon in the end of the Ottoman period and in the Mandate era, see Avitsur, Yarkon, 121– 37.

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cargo at the end of Allenby Street, a place that could serve as a base for a sovereign port or an expansion of the Jaffa port northward toward Tel Aviv.⁷² At first, the British government agreed to the building of the port—but the plans did not materialize, most probably due to budgetary problems. In 1927, when the British elected to build the port in Haifa, they lost interest entirely in building the dock in Tel Aviv or the expansion of the Jaffa port, and even opposed it, as seen above.⁷³

Milestones in the Founding of the Tel Aviv Port, 1936 – 1940 The outbreak of the Arab Revolt, with the resultant closure of the Jaffa port on April 19, 1936, emphasized the problematic nature of the port for Jewish merchants. Serving as it did as the primary gateway for the Yishuv, whose commerce focused in large part on the southern cities and colonies, the port proved to be an unstable underpinning. The absolute dependence on the port, which was ruled by unfriendly forces and surrounded by a hostile population, whose access had become dangerous, suddenly proved an unmistakeable reality. The eyes of the Yishuv in the country’s center were opened for the first time to the importance of a sovereign outlet to the sea for the Yishuv and its efforts to strike roots in the land. The Haifa port was British, creating ties to it was difficult, and travel to it took hours on a train or on the roads, through Arab villages like Jenin and Tulkarm.⁷⁴ Within the Yishuv leadership, a change began to take place in the perception of the sea; the importance of an outlet to the sea as an existential necessity for the Yishuv at the time became clear, as Ben-Gurion

 Avitsur, Yarkon, 130 – 31; Stern, “Tel-Aviv Port,” 115 – 16. One interesting plan was put forth by the Association for the Jaffa-Tel Aviv Port, which met in May 1934 in Jaffa. This was an initiative of Tel Aviv’s Jewish leadership, led by Mayor Meir Dizengoff, and the Arab leadership in Jaffa, led by Assem Bey Said, the mayor of Jaffa. The two adapted a plan for joint administration of the port by both cities in the place where the Jaffa port stood. But the initiative did not take flight; it remained on paper only. See a copy of the protocol in Bettleheim, The Merchants, 105.  Even before the decision to build the Haifa port, the British government was hesitant about the proposal to build one in Tel Aviv. It was concerned about competing with the Jaffa port and the economic and national reinforcement of the Yishuv, and was not inclined to fund its establishment; it even conditioned its agreement on collecting tax from the port. Once the port was founded, the British policy continued to limit the port’s activity and piled on the financial burdens. The customs manager, Stied, entirely rejected the new port. See Stern, “Tel-Aviv Port,” 127– 30.  Stern, “Tel-Aviv Port,” 116; “Conquest of the Sea—From Bar-Kochba Meirovitz’s Lecture at the National Conference of the Palestine Maritime League” [in Hebrew], ha-Tzofeh, March 11, 1941.

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formulated it: “Without an independent port—there is no security to our economic existence in the land, no security to Jewish immigration, and as we will not renounce this ground, as we will not renounce immigration, as we will not renounce Jewish work, as we will not renounce the Hebrew language—we will not renounce a Jewish sea and Jewish port. No technical obstacle, no economic obstacle, no political delay and hindrance will move us from a Jewish outlet to the sea.”⁷⁵ The Jaffa port’s shutdown threatened primarily citrus export; for that reason, it was the Jewish orchard owners who sought a solution.⁷⁶ The citrus fruits, grown for the most part in the Sharon region and the colonies along the coast, the short export season, the difficult transporting goods to Haifa, the overloaded port—all meant that an immediate solution was necessary.⁷⁷ A proposal was raised to the British government to expand Jaffa’s port northward, granting the Yishuv access to the port independent of the Arab port agents.⁷⁸ In order to exert pressure on the government, a demand went out to the Jewish merchants, most prominently the orchard owners, to increase the transfer of their goods through Haifa’s port, beginning in the early thirties, before the new port in Haifa was opened. Concurrently, at the initiative of the Tel Aviv Chamber of Commerce, the Tel Aviv Port and Transportation Committee was established, with the involvement of merchants and businessmen as well as representatives of the Tel Aviv municipality and Yishuv organizations. The committee demanded that the British government approve the establishment of a temporary pier in Tel Aviv until a permanent solution could be found.⁷⁹ Most of the pressure came “from above,” from the Jewish Agency, which from the beginning of the  David Ben-Gurion, “To the Sea!” in Lutsky, Tel Aviv Port, 7. On the emphasis on Jewishness or Hebrew-ness in the discussion of the sea, see Azaryahu, “Hebrew Sea.”  Rokach, Jaffa Orange Groves, 159 – 60.  The citrus industry’s growth rate in the early thirties reached its peak in the tidal wave of the Fifth Aliyah (1933 – 1935), with citrus export taking some three quarters of all of the export in Palestine’s economy. See Giladi, “Citrus Growing,” 404– 6; Komarov, “Outlet,” in Lutsky, Tel Aviv Port; Tolkowsky, “The Port and Jewish Citrus-growing,” in Lutsky Tel Aviv Port, 294– 96. Meeting of economic institutions of the Chamber of Commerce, Tel Aviv [in Hebrew], 26 April 1936, A323/57, CZA, Jerusalem.  Bar-Kochba Meirovitz, Jerusalem, to M. Sharett [in Hebrew], 4 May 1936, S11/41, CZA, Jerusalem.  Bar-Kochba Meirovitz, Jerusalem, to Y. Gruenbaum [in Hebrew], 10 May 1936, S11/41, CZA, Jerusalem. Eliezer Siegfried Hoofien, president of Tel Aviv’s Chamber of Commerce, a central figure in the establishment of the port later on, and chairman of the Marine Trust (Otzar Mifalei Yam), headed the committee. “The Opening of the Tel Aviv Coast” [in Hebrew], Yediot Iriyat Tel Aviv 1– 2, 1935/1936, 52– 54. For more on Hoofien and his activities, see Bettleheim, The Merchants, 121– 31.

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Arab strike stood firm on the necessity of a “Jewish outlet to the sea,” in the words of Ben-Gurion, and appealed a number of times to the government to request the establishment of a port in Tel Aviv. Ultimately, on May 15, 1936, a month from the outbreak of hostilities, approval was received from the British, but they emphasized that the approval was for a temporary pier—not a permanent port— and for an anchorage for unloading a few types of cargo on Tel Aviv’s shores.⁸⁰ The next day, construction began on a wooden pier south of the Yarkon River estuary, near the Levant Fair exhibition buildings in the city’s north. A day later the pier was standing, the considerations about its location being its proximity to the Yarkon estuary, which, it was hoped, would serve as a boat anchorage, proximity to the exhibition buildings, which could be exploited for storage, and the relative proximity to exhibition grounds, which could be used for unloading.⁸¹ On the morning of May 19, 1936, one month after the eruption of riots and the shutdown of the ships in Jaffa, the first ship anchored on the shores of Tel Aviv. It was the Yugoslavian vessel Chaterty and it anchored at the Yarkon estuary with one thousand tons of cement on board. Due to the shallow water and the stormy sea, the boats could not near the wooden bridge, so sacks of cement were carried by hand to the shore in knee-high water. The unloading of the ship was also aided by volunteers, including youth from the sports associations and a group of eleven Salonican port workers brought from the Haifa port and led by Zeev Hayam, who was appointed director of unloading.⁸² Dozens of members of HaKibbutz HaMeuhad also took part in unloading, sitting as they did on the

 “How the License Was Received for Unloading Ships in Tel Aviv” [in Hebrew], Haaretz, May 20, 1936, 1.  Subcommittee for building the pier, proposal for building a pier in Tel Aviv, Tel Aviv [in Hebrew], 8 May 1936, S25/10076, CZA, Jerusalem; the specific point for the pier’s establishment was selected, it appears, by Yaacov Ben-Sira (Schiffman), Meir Dizengoff, and Bar-Kochba Meirovitz in a preliminary tour they held at the place. For first-person eyewitness testimony, see Ben-Sira, “Location,” in Lutsky, Tel Aviv Port; Ben-Sira, “Deepwater Port,” in Lutsky, Tel Aviv Port. In contrast, it was claimed that the task of locating the appropriate beach for the port was given by the Jewish Agency to three members of the Hapoel sea company—Katriel Yaffe, Amiram Shochet, and Yair Shochet—and they determined the location after a night swim, diving to ascertain the proper depth, and finding a beach that was free of boulders. See Schochet, “Tel Aviv Beach,” in Ran, Fleet.  Zeev Hayam was at that time the director of unloading services for the Shipping Company in Haifa and an instructor at Zevulun in Haifa. In the years 1936 – 1940, he served as first captain of the Tel Aviv port. See S. Saria, “Chaterty on the Tel Aviv Shore” [in Hebrew], ha-Boḳer, May 20, 1936, 3; Hayam, Ships’ Tales, 121– 34. For Zeev Hayam’s report about the establishment of the Tel Aviv port, see Frishman, Tel Aviv Port, 11– 24. For reports on the involvement of members of Hapoel’s sea company in running the port in its early stages, see “Memories of Yair Shochet on the Establishment of the ‘Tel Aviv Port’—1936,” in Tankus, Hapoel, 2– 5, 48 – 49.

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banks of the Yarkon; some had previously worked at the Jaffa port. Members of the Hapoel and Zevulun sports associations also participated.⁸³ Against the backdrop of the violent events the Yishuv experienced at the time, the arrival of the ship and its unloading generated great excitement, raising morale.⁸⁴ The print media at the time reported on a day of joy for Tel Aviv’s residents, with masses arriving at the place, cheering and singing, excited to watch the cargo being unloaded from the first ship on the shores of Tel Aviv, applauding the Jewish porters who brought the sacks of cement to the shore—many even reciting the Sheheḥeyanu blessing.⁸⁵ Representatives from the Yishuv’s leadership were also present, as were members of the municipality’s administration and the Tel Aviv port committee. The first two sacks of cement became public souvenirs; one was destined for the Tel Aviv Museum and the other for the municipality building. The transfer of the souvenir to the museum was also a celebratory event; hundreds of people gathered near the building, calling “hurrah,” singing, and dancing.⁸⁶ But the wooden dock did not withstand the waves; it began to crumble on the very first day of unloading, and only twenty tons of cement could be unloaded. It became clear that the work could not continue long under those conditions, and on the next day, May 20, the foundations for a permanent iron dock were laid; it was wide enough to install tracks on, and cars on the tracks moved the cargo.⁸⁷ The leadership and the public viewed the unloading of the ship in the early days as a first stage on the road to an independent Jewish port, believing that they should not suffice with a temporary dock. The dream was a permanent Jewish port—despite the fact that the British were careful not to use the word “port,”  Porat, Fishery Pioneers, 74; for reports from Hapoel sea company members on their involvement in the early days of the port, see Ran, Fleet, 43.  The Jaffa sailors went out on their boats, evidently in order to disrupt the unloading. The British port police, however, working both from the sea and from the air, prevented them from doing so, and they returned to the port. See Avigur et al., Hagana, 2:2:699.  A blessing traditionally made for special occasions.  “And There Was a Port in Tel Aviv” [in Hebrew], Haaretz, May 20, 1936, 1, 7; “In This Place There Will Be a Great Port” [in Hebrew], ha-Boḳer, May 20, 1936, 1.  The bridge was covered by a wood floor on which three narrow railway lines (known as Decauville railways) ran—one for the crane and two lines from the warehouses for moving cars. The boats could unload some 1,200 tons of cargo each day on both sides of the dock. See Subcommittee for building the pier, Proposal for building a pier in Tel Aviv [in Hebrew], 8 May 1936, S22/ 10076, CZA, Jerusalem. Tel Aviv’s city engineer, Yaacov Ben-Sira (Shiffman), was tasked with building the iron pier, and its construction was completed in September 1936. See Y. Shiffman, “The Emerging Tel Aviv Port” [in Hebrew], Yediot Iriyat Tel Aviv 3 – 4, 1936, 107– 8; S. Kornfeld, “Shana le-Ḳiyum Namal Tel Aviv: Miśparim ṿe-Uvdot,” Tel Aviv 19 May 1937, S54/99, CZA, Jerusalem; Ben-Sira, “Conquest,” in Aricha, Jaffa.

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Fig. 5: Port workers unloading sacks of cement from lighters near the breakwater at the Tel Aviv port, August 1, 1936. Photographer: Zoltan Kluger (The National Photo Collection, D627-066)

authorizing a temporary dock for the unloading of specific cargo only. The word “port” was heard everywhere on the Jewish street: aside from the cries of “Long live the Tel Aviv port” heard from those who gathered, a group of drivers who arranged the unloading organized, calling themselves the Tel Aviv Port Cooperative, and draped their cars with blue and white flags and signs that read “Long live the Tel Aviv port.” Other cars in the area were also adorned with signs bearing the same words. One of those leading the hopes for a large, independent Jewish port was Meir Dizengoff, mayor of Tel Aviv, who rose from his sickbed on that morning, May 19, and came to see the birth of the first Hebrew port. His appearance generated great excitement, and in his speech from the temporary wooden bridge he expressed a distinct vision. He declared the historic importance of the moment as part of the change in general perception that he felt must be adopted regarding the sea: Today we wish to conquer the sea. We want a sea of our own, the waters of the Land of Israel, the waters of Tel Aviv. We want large ships with the flag of Zion on their masts, ships that will go and announce to the nation of Israel that there is a land and there is

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a nation safely on its way…. We will not leave the shores of Tel Aviv. We begin slowly, building a pier. Ships will come. There will be a great port here, whence ships will leave to the world and where our youth will have a vibrant new role: a port, shipping, fishing…a new world! Here at the port there will be traffic and life. Immigrants will come, goods will come, the land’s produce will be sent. Now we go to the sea and nothing will stop us. It will all materialize if we have the will and the faith!⁸⁸

More was written about Dizengoff’s words to emphasize this dimension on the next day: Thus—the Tel Aviv port. That is, the “port” is still in quotation marks. It will officially be called the “Tel Aviv Shore.” However, yesterday, the first twenty tons of cargo were unloaded from the first ship to the dock at the “Tel Aviv Shore”—and this small thing was a celebration for all of Tel Aviv. Because everyone believes Meir Dizengoff’s words: “And I tell you that despite it all there will be a great port here!”⁸⁹

The Mandate government stood firm on its policy, refusing to fund construction at the port, and even forbidding the municipality to take part. Moreover, from the first moment, it imposed taxes and fees—dock fees and storage fees, for example —on all economic activity there. The government also refused to develop access roads and other infrastructure related to the port’s activity.⁹⁰ In late 1936, the initiators of the port—both private and public, belonging to the Yishuv—met and decided to found a company that would finance the building of the port and manage the ongoing activities. Thus was established the Marine Trust (Otzar Mifalei Yam), with the involvement of the Jewish Agency, Histadrut, citrus growers, bankers, and private individuals. The company created shares for the public, and these were enthusiastically purchased. In the first week, shares in the amount of 100,000 pounds were offered; these were purchased that same week, proving the public’s support for the enterprise and its faith in its future. This was a very large amount in the terms of the mid-thirties, enough to fund the initial activities for

 M. Dizengoff, “There Will Be a Great Port Here,” in Lutsky, Tel Aviv Port, 3 – 4.  S. Saria, “Chaterty on the Tel Aviv Shore” [in Hebrew], ha-Boḳer, May 20, 1936, 3.  Asaf Goldberg, “The Days of the Giving of Our Port…” [in Hebrew], ha-Boḳer, May 19, 1937, 3. Shavit and Biger, Tel Aviv, 138. Throughout the years of the Mandate, the British reserved the right to collect taxes and fees at the port despite the fact that they had not invested in its establishment and did not take part in its operation. As Eliezer Hoofien, chair of the Marine Trust, noted, “In financial terms, the division is as follows: the income goes to the government, the expenses are on us.” See S. Hofein, chairman of the Marine Trust, lecture before the port advisory committee [in Hebrew], 7 February 1946, S53/625, CZA, Jerusalem.

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founding the port.⁹¹ The Yishuv was very proud of the “first Jewish port,” and aside from purchasing shares, many supportive articles appeared in the press and celebrations and ceremonies were held. Milestones from the port’s inauguration in mid-1936 until it closed to traffic in 1940 were each, in their time, a source of pride for the Yishuv on its road to maritime independence. The first export cargo left Tel Aviv’s shores on June 7, 1936, on two ships owned by Jewish shipping companies—the Atid (Future) and the Richard Borchard, both of which will be discussed below.⁹² On August 1, 1936, High Commissioner Wauchope sent a letter allowing the establishment of an anchorage, meant to protect the vessels, which were exposed to the waves. The anchorage was built between October 1936 and January 1937 across from the Levant Fair exhibition grounds, and it constituted British consent for the building of a permanent port at the location.⁹³ Near the end of December 1936, at the height of citrus season, the first delivery of citrus fruits left the port; the first crate was sent as a gift to George VI, king of England. The completion of the anchorage at that time was meant to make the loading of citrus fruits easier, and citrus growers expressed satisfaction from the new conditions at the Tel Aviv port in comparison to those in Jaffa.⁹⁴ In August 1937, the high commissioner withdrew the limitations on unloading certain types of cargo, giving a license to unload cargo of any type.⁹⁵ February 1938 saw the opening of a passengers’ hall at the Tel Aviv port by the high commissioner, and it became a port for Jewish immigration as well. The port’s exit was adorned with the symbolic inscription “Gate of Zion.”⁹⁶ The opening of the port to passenger traffic received  “For the Marine Trust” [in Hebrew], Davar, May 29, 1936, 4; Lutsky, Tel Aviv Port, 343 – 44; Shavit and Biger, Tel Aviv, 138.  ha-Boḳer, June 8, 1936, 1 [in Hebrew].  On the negotiations with the British and the different plans for building the anchorage, see Stern, “Tel Aviv Port,” 118 – 19. The permit for building the anchorage was given under three conditions, in the spirit of the conditions stipulated by the British for the building of the port: (1) there would be no municipal financial support, nor support from the government; (2) government expenditure would be returned to it, and it could have no financial losses whatsoever from the enterprise; (3) all building plans would be approved by the government. See Arthur Wauchope, High Commissioner, to M. Sharett [in Hebrew], 1 August 1936, S25/2561, CZA, Jerusalem; Y. Shiffman, “The Port for Boats in Tel Aviv” [in Hebrew], Yediot Iriyat Tel Aviv 7, 1936 – 1937, 236.  From the port’s journal, “The Celebration of the First Delivery of Citrus Fruit” [in Hebrew], Yediot Iriyat Tel Aviv 7, 1936 – 1937, 239.  Zuckerman, “Notes,” in Lutsky, Tel Aviv Port, 282.  “In the Port and Around It: The Visit of the High Commissioner—Plans for Disembarking Passengers” [in Hebrew], Yediot Iriyat Tel Aviv 7– 8, no. 8, 1937– 1938, 189; Y. Rokach, “Tel Aviv—Gate of Zion” [in Hebrew], Yediot Iriyat Tel Aviv 9, no. 8, 1937– 1938, 203; for the proclamations and speeches given at the event, see “The Opening of the Gate of Zion in Tel Aviv” [in Hebrew], Yediot

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special notice and was perceived as the realization of the enterprise of the port’s construction and completion.⁹⁷ Building and design of the Tel Aviv port was completed near the outbreak of the Second World War. On land, it spread across sixty dunams, and the anchorage space—its area at sea—was twelve dunams, as opposed to forty in Jaffa. The water was the same depth as the water in Jaffa— 2.5 meters.⁹⁸ Amongst the first workers at the port in Tel Aviv there were, as stated, veteran porters and port workers from the Salonican group, members of Hapoel’s maritime association and other associations, and members of the youth group (from Hebrew Socialist Youth), who established an urban kibbutz in Tel Aviv and worked in various government jobs. The number of workers in the port grew as it developed, and more workers enlisted from farms and companies belonging to HaKibbutz HaMeuhad.⁹⁹ The primary problem that the port contended with from its very first day was funding. Hopes that the expenses of establishing and running the port could be covered by its income were dashed; it quickly became clear that the expenses of establishing the port, the expansion, and the everyday activities were far higher than the income. Those using the port were required to pay higher rates than those of Jaffa and Haifa—primarily due to the government’s refusal to take any part in financial aid, labor disputes over party affiliation and wage claims, inexperienced management, and low production in running the port. All of these factors damaged the port’s image and, more importantly, the willingness of ship agents to load or unload their cargo at the Tel Aviv port as opposed to the others.¹⁰⁰ Iriyat Tel Aviv 9, no. 8, 1937– 1938, 238 – 42. The disembarking passengers and unloading of baggage at the Tel Aviv port was coordinated by the Jewish Agency’s aliyah office in Tel Aviv. All work related to moving passengers and their baggage was taken care of by Prika on behalf of the Jewish Agency in Tel Aviv. See Memorandum of understanding between Jewish Agency for Israel aliyah office, Tel Aviv, and Prika Shipping, Stevedoreship, and Porterage, Tel Aviv Port, Tel Aviv [in Hebrew], 22 February 1938, S6/4219, CZA, Jerusalem. From its opening to passengers and until its closure due to the Second World War, 34,861 passengers came through the port. See Lutsky, Tel Aviv Port, 374.  Remez, Sea Spirit, 50 – 51; Frishman, Tel Aviv Port, 3 – 9.  Avitsur, Rise and Fall, 216.  Avitsur, Yarkon, 131– 32; Tsur, Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 1:193 – 95; Ran, Mila Brener.  The difficulties and complaints about the port’s management were oft debated in the press at the time, from the opening until the Second World War. For a selection, see B. Harodad, “The Tel Aviv Port in 1937” [in Hebrew], Haaretz, January 12, 1938, 3; “The State of Work in the Tel Aviv Port” [in Hebrew], Haaretz, May 25, 1938, 4; “Neither Balancing the Budget Nor the Good of the Enterprise—But Party Greed and Class Takeover” [in Hebrew], ha-Mashḳif, March 21, 1940, 1– 2; A. Zabriskie, “Port Pangs” [in Hebrew], Davar, April 5, 1940, 3.

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Fig. 6: General view of the Tel Aviv port, October 10, 1938. Photographer: Zoltan Kluger (The National Photo Collection, D403-033)

An analysis of financial data about the port’s activity reinforces the claim about the Tel Aviv port’s negligible economic contribution relative to the other two. The amount of cargo loaded and unloaded at the port less than four years before its closure demonstrates that in the first year of its existence the Tel Aviv port had 3 percent of the country’s import and 1 percent of its export. However, in 1937, cargo traffic reached 126,000 tons, more than at the Jaffa port before the First World War and the years following the British conquest. In 1938, 196,000 tons were loaded and unloaded at the Tel Aviv port, more than at the Jaffa port between 1925 and 1928.¹⁰¹ Generally, import and export saw constant growth; the first record was set in 1939—158,000 tons of import and 95,500 tons of export, a total of 253,500 tons of import/export at the port. The second record year was 1948, with 197,000 tons of import and 58,500 tons

 Avitsur, Yarkon, 131.

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of export, a total of 255,500 tons of import/export. These peak years were greater than those at the Jaffa port and the Haifa port in 1931 and 1932.¹⁰² However, the relative proportion of Tel Aviv’s port in maritime activity was, ultimately, small, as is evident from citrus export: in 1938 – 1939, the country exported 15,756,000 crates of citrus fruits. Of these, Tel Aviv’s port moved 1,867,641 million crates (11.9 percent). In 1939 – 1940, the country sent 7,348,683 million crates (less than half), of which 818,508 came through Tel Aviv’s port, a similar proportion (11.1 percent).¹⁰³ An evaluation of the financial value of import and export cargo passing through Jaffa and Tel Aviv’s ports during the four years prior to the Second World War in Palestine pounds—in contrast with the Haifa port—shows first and foremost that the Haifa port was the leading port in the land during those years, with most of the import and export transported there (see table 3.2). Comparing the Jaffa and Tel Aviv ports in 1937, Tel Aviv’s first full year of operations, the import at Tel Aviv’s port was greater than that at Jaffa’s port, and this trend continued until the outbreak of the Second World War and the closure of the land’s ports. In contrast, export from the Tel Aviv port maintained the same low values throughout that period; at its peak, in 1938, it reached 15 percent of the import to the land. A general calculation of those four years of activity shows Tel Aviv with an average of 21 percent of the country’s import and only 10 percent of the export.¹⁰⁴

The Establishment of the Tel Aviv Port: Symbolism The idea of a Jewish port was first and foremost an economic need for developing Jewish trade, primarily for the export of citrus fruits and import of general goods, as a response to the Arab threat on the Yishuv’s economy and trade at the time. In retrospect, the port’s economic weight in Palestine’s maritime trade was relatively small. However, an examination of the port in the world of the Yishuv determines that there was great symbolic importance to the enterprise, importance that went beyond the boundaries of the port itself—especially during the days of rioting and the precarious security conditions. The opening of the Tel Aviv port was perceived as an event of extraordinary historic significance for the Yishuv, a seminal step on the road to national sovereignty.

 Lutsky, Tel Aviv Port, 373; Avitsur, Rise and Fall, 212.  Marine Trust, Third annual report of the board of directors for 1939 [in Hebrew], DD1/3399, CZA, Jerusalem.  The data was processed by Avitsur, Rise and Fall, table 17.

,,  % ,,  % ,,  % ,,  %

,,  %



Total







Import

Export

,,  %

,,  % ,,  % ,,  % ,,  %

Jaffa Port

Field Year

Port

,,  %

, % ,,  % ,,  % ,,  %

Import

,,  %

, % , % ,  % ,  %

Export

Tel Aviv Port

,,  % ,,  % ,,  % ,,  %

Import

Export

,,  %

,,  % ,,  % ,,  % ,,  %

Haifa Port

,,  %

Table 3.2. Value of Goods in Palestine’s Ports (in Palestine pounds), 1936 – 1939

,,

,,

,,

,,

,,

Import

Total

,,

,,

,,

,,

,,

Export

138 Chapter 3: Expanding Jewish Maritime Activity in the Land of Israel, 1934 – 1939

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In the spirit of Itamar Ben-Avi’s words quoted above, many saw the establishment of the port as the most important enterprise created by the Yishuv on its road to independence—“the foundational moment in true sovereignty”—in his words, since the advent of new Jewish settlement in the land.¹⁰⁵ On the establishment of the port, Ben-Gurion wrote in his journal that “this thing is equal in my eyes to the new Balfour Declaration.”¹⁰⁶ Elsewhere, he tied the events and the closure of the Jaffa port to the Jewish maritime awakening about the need for an independent Jewish outlet to the sea: These events demonstrated the question of our status at sea in all of its tragic poignancy and urgency. For the first two generations of our renewed settlement we made efforts to hold on to the territory in our homeland and we were distracted from the homeland’s water. Recent events have demonstrated that without a free and independent outlet to the sea, our entire existence and future in this land is in danger. Without our own free outlet to the sea there is no Jewish immigration—there is also no guarantee of the existing Yishuv’s physical existence. Without the sea, we are trapped in an economic and political ghetto. Without the sea we are subject to starvation and extinction.¹⁰⁷

However, aside from the obvious defense and economic dimensions that were linked to the establishment of the Tel Aviv port, the symbolism that was attached to its founding and development in the early years was notable on a number of other planes. For example, the opening of the port in the midst of the days of mourning over the victims who had fallen in the rioting made an important contribution to morale, raising the spirit of the Yishuv in difficult times.¹⁰⁸ Ben-Gurion even saw fit to note in his journal the “contribution” of the events to the establishment of the port: The vision of the pier in itself is enough to hearten and dispel all mental distress and melancholy…. There is no thing that better symbolizes our position and singular ability in the Land of Israel as this conquest in a time of riots (or war?). If there were no losses of life— which have no recompense—all of the destruction of markets would be worth this conquest, and we would still owe a reward to the rioters for their agency in this great creation.

 Ben-Avi was present at the port’s inauguration and gave a speech. For his account of it, and on the involvement of Tel Aviv mayor Meir Dizengoff and High Commissioner Arthur Wauchope in its establishment, see Ben-Avi, With the Dawn, 492– 99.  David Ben-Gurion, journal [in Hebrew], July 17, 1936, 62, Ben-Gurion Archives, Sde Boker.  Ben-Gurion, In the Battle, 1:27.  For example, in Davar on May 19, 1936 (p. 1), it was written that “In the midst of these days of mourning over the many victims who continue to fall in the bloody riots, the Yugoslavian ship Chaterty dropped anchor across from the exhibition grounds.”

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Because if there were no riots or strike, we would of course not achieve this for who knows how many more years.¹⁰⁹

Later, Mordechai Namir, the mayor of Tel Aviv-Jaffa, wrote: “The enterprise and the valor, revealed when it was established, in a time of emergency and bloody events, gave august expression to the aspirations to return to the sea, planting a new hope in the heart of each Jew in each place, and the nation was filled with pride upon seeing the Tel Aviv port as concrete proof of its constructive national ability.”¹¹⁰ There were those who even claimed that the opening of the independent Jewish gateway to the sea contained the best dreams of Jewish sovereignty, that the very idea of fighting for the right for sovereign Jewish existence in the Land of Israel found expression in that event.¹¹¹ Support for this theory is evident in the Arab response to the establishment of the port; rather than protesting the expected economic fallout for the Jaffa port, the Arabs saw the establishment of the port in Tel Aviv during the days of rioting as having national significance, reinforcing the Yishuv’s hold on the land, and thus worthy of being battled fullforce.¹¹² Additional symbolism was attributed to the port as representing the longawaited gateway and bridge to Diaspora Jewry: “One frozen barrier has fallen —the barrier of the foreign port—between us and the Diaspora, fallen and will not again rise,” David Remez said in a speech at a party for port workers in Tel Aviv, adding: “I am confident that tens of thousands of Israel in all of the exiles, in America, in Poland, in Romania, in Greece, partake heart and soul in this celebration of the pioneering work at the Tel Aviv port.”¹¹³ Others saw the port’s establishment as an event with religious significance and a milestone in the historic resurrection of the nation of Israel in its land:

 David Ben-Gurion, journal [in Hebrew], July 11, 1936, 40, Ben-Gurion Archives, Sde Boker.  Lutsky, Tel Aviv Port, xi.  Herman, Conquering a Route, 107– 9. Hoofien also expressed a similar sentiment with the two-year anniversary of the port’s founding: “The reason the public listens to us and has volunteered large sums for the port is because the enterprise expressed their desire for the full and independent life of a normal, invigorated, and complete nation”; see “Two-year Anniversary for the Tel Aviv Port” [in Hebrew], Haaretz, May 27, 1938, 12.  Davar, March 25, 1937, 1 [in Hebrew], quoting a news item in the newspaper al-Difaa titled “Make Efforts to Destroy the Tel Aviv Port” [in Arabic], in which the Arab population in Palestine was commanded “not only to fight for the existence of the Jaffa port, but also to make efforts to destroy the Tel Aviv port. This is not a war between port and port, but between one nationality and another.”  Remez, Sea Spirit, 25.

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The crowding was great. Many tears of joy fell and were soaked into the sand on the seashore—the same sand that the patriarch Abraham’s future seed was compared to in his blessing. And within the cacophony of voices of the great masses I hear an old Jewish man demanding of his friend: Desecrators of holiness! Why are the cement merchants permitted to remove all of the sacks, as if it were a profane thing[?] This cement is holy and should be sold like the soil of the Land of Israel in small bags to each Jew in the Diaspora who wishes to build a home. Exactly in the way that a little bit of soil from the Land of Israel is put on the head of each Jew brought to burial, a little cement should be placed in the foundations of each house built by a Jew in the Diaspora.¹¹⁴

In this spirit, there were those who compared the arrival of the first ship and the unloading of the first sacks of cement to the hand of God parting the Red Sea in the Israelites’ Exodus from Egypt: On both sides of the street, spectacle across from spectacle, waves of moved and excited Jews stood like a pillar of water; between them, “on the land,” passed freight cars loaded with sacks of cement, the first-fruit of Tel Aviv’s delivery, and the throaty Salonicans stand conducting propaganda slogans: “Long live the first Jewish port!” Bravo! God will build a port!¹¹⁵ Bravo! Long live free immigration!—Bravo! And an old, undersized Jew, with grey sidelocks…and a faded green capote fluttering on his frail body—also answers them with great dedication and passion: “Your right hand, O Lord, glorious on power!” Then I knew that it was a fateful day for Tel Aviv.¹¹⁶

Chaim Weizmann, during his visit to the port in December 1936, also viewed it as an extraordinary historic event for the new Jewish settlement in the land, selecting an image from the story of the Exodus from Egypt: “From everything I have been privileged to see in the Land of Israel in recent years, nothing has made as immense an impression as that which I was privileged to see today. This is a new enterprise for us in its nature. Work is being done here that we are not accustomed to. This was done in haste, and created ex nihilo…as we left Egypt in haste, so we are building a port in haste.”¹¹⁷ An additional symbolic dimension of the Tel Aviv port’s establishment was evident in the “nearing” of the Yishuv to the sea. Of the port’s inauguration, BenGurion wrote in his journal that finally “we will be the nation of the sea.”¹¹⁸ Zeev Hayam wrote that for many years the Yishuv had recoiled from the sea, but with

 Orleans, “Land of Israel’s Sea,” in Lutsky, Tel Aviv Port.  This was a reference to an earlier song, El Yivneh ha-Galil, “God will build the Galilee,” often sung in the days of the First Aliyah.  Asaf Goldberg, “The Days of the Giving of Our Port…” [in Hebrew], ha-Boḳer, May 19, 1937, 3.  “C. Weizmann with the Sea Workers” [in Hebrew], Davar, December 4, 1936, 1.  David Ben-Gurion, journal [in Hebrew], July 17, 1936, 62, Ben-Gurion Archives, Sde Boker.

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the building of the independent Jewish port that trend had changed; there was now great excitement in the Yishuv about the conquest of the sea and ist professions.¹¹⁹ The port thus became the herald of the Yishuv’s liberation from dependence on foreign—and at times even hostile—agents in the field of the sea and its professions.¹²⁰ The construction of the Tel Aviv port broadened the knowledge and experience in sea work—in the building of ships, for example, which helped shape the Jewish naval forces.¹²¹ Eliezer Shechter, deputy mayor of Tel Aviv, expressed this well twenty-five years after the port opened: “The Tel Aviv port became the center of maritime training for the Yishuv, the workshop for the experienced sailor…. Because of its narrow dimensions, which would later be an obstacle, it was the melting pot in which the Jewish seaman, fisherman, and port man were forged. The direct contact between hundreds of workers brought them closer together, creating techniques and a heritage.”¹²² It was in this spirit, it appears, that Leah Goldberg wrote her famous poem “Song of the Port,” published in Davar le-Yeladim in November 1936; it lyrically expressed the renewal and active nature of the workers who were part of its building: “A thousand hands unload and build/We conquer the shore and the wave.”¹²³ In this sense the port’s construction was extraordinary: an independent port was built while the Yishuv was not yet the full owner of the land. Thus the Yishuv began to create, in effect, an independent sea policy while it had not yet attained national sovereignty. It is not surprising, then, that a link was made by the leadership—and strengthened often in the press and literature at the time—between the establishment of first Jewish port and the “Jewish sea” or “sea conquest.” These terms became more accepted in the discourse about national sovereignty that developed in the Yishuv primarily from the second half of the thirties.¹²⁴ The new etymology expressed the change taking place in the attitude of the leadership and central institutions to the sea, in contrast with the near complete dismissal of it until the mid-thirties. The establishment of the Tel Aviv port, then, contributed to the awakening of maritime consciousness and to the maritime sensibility. In this context, the symbolic maritime sovereignty in the establishment of the Tel Aviv port needed to be accompanied by supplemental activity—the establishment of a national

 Zeev Hayam, “Jews and Sea Work,” in Lutsky, Tel Aviv Port.  Shechter, “Jubilee,” in Lutsky, Tel Aviv Port.  Tuvim, “Building Boats,” in Lutsky, Tel Aviv Port.  E. Shechter, “Jubilee,” in Lutsky, Tel Aviv Port.  Leah Goldberg [in Hebrew], Davar le-Yeladim, November 19, 1936, 1.  Azaryahu, “Hebrew Sea.” On “Jewish sea” and “Jewish port city” from the perspective of the Jewish immigrants through the Tel Aviv port see Schlör, “Tel Aviv.”

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shipping company that would act in the interests of the Yishuv, as David Remez said: “A Jewish port without Jewish ships—is a barren port.”¹²⁵

The Emergence of Private Jewish Shipping Companies From the second third of the thirties, a shift occurred in the field of Jewish shipping, a shift that was tied both to internal factors in the Land of Israel and external ones—which were also partially interrelated. The land was experiencing economic growth, the number of immigrants had increased, and growing activity was recorded at the Haifa port, whose building had been complete in late 1933. At that time, changes in Europe also led to efforts to establish Jewish shipping— most notably the threat on Germany’s Jewish community and the rise of the Nazis to power on April 1, 1933, which increased the need for immigration. A transfer agreement (the “Haavara” Agreement) was signed in Germany; Germany’s Jews were permitted to take possessions and goods from Germany to the Land of Israel. The agreement led, among other things, to an awakening in the Jewish shipping sector in the Land of Israel.¹²⁶ Most of the interest came from Jewish seamen from Germany; some was also from Jewish seamen and maritime tradesmen from Romania. As a result, between 1934 and 1937 nine private, Jewish-owned shipping companies were founded in Haifa. These companies operated eight ships and 136 boats.¹²⁷ The most prominent companies were (1) Palestine Shipping Co. Ltd., owner of the Tel Aviv; (2) Palestine Maritime Lloyd Ltd., owner of the Har Zion, Har Carmel, and Miriam; and (3) Atid Navigation Company Ltd., Haifa, owner of the Atid, Amal, Alisa, and Richard Borchard. The year 1934 was a turning point in the evolution of Jewish shipping: the three Jewish shipping companies recorded capital of 150,000 Palestine pounds. Their ships, which employed more than two hundred sailors and seamen, sailed between Palestine and the European shores, as well as to the Syrian and Egyptian coasts, until the outbreak of the Second World War.¹²⁸

 Remez, Sea Spirit, 26. For more, see Rotenstreich, “Our Sea Problem,” in Lutsky, Tel Aviv Port, 282– 84.  Gelber, New Homeland, 23 – 39, 78 – 92, 427– 28.  Gurevich, Manufacture, Transportation, and Commerce, 61.  B.-K. Meirovitz to E. Kaplan, Tel Aviv [in Hebrew], 13 January 1937, S11/44, CZA, Jerusalem; Meirovitz, To the Sea, 6 – 7.

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Palestine Shipping Co. Ltd. Palestine Shipping Co. Ltd. owned the steamship Tel Aviv, a mixed passengercargo ship that operated in the Land of Israel from 1935 to 1936 and was considered the first passenger ship belonging to Jews of the Land of Israel. The company was founded by Jewish shipping tycoon Arnold Bernstain from Hamburg, Germany, who had begun to show an interest in commercial ties between Palestine and Hamburg near the end of the twenties. Hitler’s rise to power in Germany hastened, as noted, a number of the wealthier Jews in Germany to immigrate to the Land of Israel, taking their money with them. One of them was Bernstain, who founded Palestine Shipping in late 1933 in cooperation with other German immigrants. The company’s manager and agent in Palestine was Bernard Herskovitz, who was viewed as having extensive shipping experience and who was wellknown in the country’s shipping circles. In 1934, with the transfer agreement, the company bought an old ship from Bernstain. This was also consistent with German interests, as the work done on the ship provided employment for shipyard workers in Hamburg.¹²⁹ Tel Aviv was a ten-thousand-ton cargo ship that was repaired by the new owners and repurposed as a passenger ship. It could hold cargo as well as four hundred passengers. Its speed was thirteen to fourteen knots, above average for its day. On May 17, 1935, the Tel Aviv was registered at the Haifa port as SS 1, and, ten days later on May 27, it set sail from the port of Haifa to Trieste. Its regular line was Haifa–Trieste–Haifa, a route that took roughly two weeks.¹³⁰ The ship was known to be superbly organized and clean, ensuring a high caliber in the passenger cabins. So, for example, all cabins were ventilated, in contrast with other ships in the eastern Mediterranean. The ship sailed the Haifa–Trieste–Haifa route for two and a half years, and was considered a forerunner in a number of realms, laying foundations for Jewish national shipping in its infancy: the ship had a special kitchen and dining room installed for those who ate only kosher food; it even had a synagogue. Its owners chose to have only one passenger class, of a uniform level, and thus the ship pioneered tourist class in the Middle East. The crew wore uniforms, the officers with an extra Magen David on the stripes on their sleeves or epaulets, and the sailors with a cap with a ribbon that said Tel Aviv Ship. When the ship reached the port of Haifa or left it, the Land of Israel maritime ensign flag was raised on it

 Herman, Conquering a Route, 62– 64; Hayam, Ships’ Tales, 117– 20; Gelber, “Zionist Policy.” On German interests in the transfer agreement, see Barkai, “German Interests.”  Hayam, Sea Routes, 21; Herman, Conquering a Route, 62– 64; Yarkoni, The Sea, 211.

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and Hatikva (the Jewish national anthem) played on the deck. This obviously attracted resentment on the part of the Arabs, who ruled the Haifa port at the time. The port’s manager, Mr. Rogers, called for Mr. Herskovitz and demanded that they not raise the Jewish flag on the ship’s foremast, but rather the official Palestine flag; Herskovitz refused.¹³¹ The ship was considered groundbreaking in the expansion of the work of Jewish seamen on its deck as well, and it appears that its owners constantly toiled to increase the number of Jews working on board: When the ship first arrived at the Haifa port, it had a crew of 142, only two of whom were Jews. However, on its first voyage it had eleven Jewish crew members, and two years later, it had 132.¹³² One Zionist event regarding the revival of Jewish seafaring was also tied to the ship: the delegates from the Land of Israel who sailed to the Nineteenth Zionist Congress—which took place in Lucerne in the summer of 1935— held a meeting on its deck. It was from this meeting that the call came out for “the creation of a national committee that will support the existing maritime enterprises and create new maritime enterprises, such as the transport of cargo and passengers, fishing, shipping, loading and unloading, education and training of workers for these enterprises,” later the national shipping company Zim, which we will discuss in the book’s fifth chapter.¹³³ The appearance of the large white steamship on the shores of the Land of Israel, with the words “Tel Aviv” adorning its bow in Hebrew lettering, left an immense impression on the Yishuv and its leadership. Its size, its beauty, the Zionist flag it bore, the name of the first— and still growing—Hebrew city, the Jewish seamen treading the streets of Tel Aviv —all were perceived as the realization of the Zionist dream of maritime sovereignty.¹³⁴ However, the appearance of the Tel Aviv in the Mediterranean also did not escape the competing shipping companies; in its early days it encountered prob-

 Hayam, Ships’ Tales, 117– 20.  Protocol of Zionist Executive meeting [in Hebrew], 19 May 1935, 1; Hayam, Sea Routes, 13; Ran, “German Immigration,” 59 – 63.  Present at the meeting were, among others, David Remez, Dov Hoz, Abba Hushi, Berl Katznelson, Golda Meir, Rachel Yannait Ben-Zvi, and Paula Ben-Gurion. See Memorandum signed by 108 representatives on the ship’s deck [in Hebrew], 13 August 1935, J1/1872, CZA, Jerusalem. The signees collected earnest money at the expense of of the first shares in the amount of 10,660 Palestine pounds, for the establishment of a maritime company, the Israel Maritime Company; Newman, Eshel, Pomrock, and Raviv, Israel and the Sea, 178. One of the Congress’s important decisions was the initial resolution that maritime activity in the Land of Israel was no less important than agriculture or industry, and in this framework it determined that a maritime department would be established at the Jewish Agency.  Herman, Conquering a Route, 63 – 64; Remez, Sea Spirit, 29 – 32.

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lems stemming primarily from competition with the Italian national shipping company, Lloyd Triestino, which was backed by the Italian government and very influential in the field of shipping at the time.¹³⁵ Until the appearance of the Tel Aviv, the Haifa–Trieste line was the Italian company’s traditional route, and thus it did everything in its power to create obstacles and pose problems for the Tel Aviv. Delays in the supply of water and food at the ports, a publicity campaign against the ship in the Italian press, and most notably the drastic lowering of fares were all acts that the Tel Aviv had a difficult time combating.¹³⁶ The difficulties faced by Palestine Shipping and the Tel Aviv expose the national and economic struggle that began to take place in the shipping market in the mid-thirties between foreign companies and the evolving Jewish shipping world—including Atid and Palestine Maritime Lloyd, which we will discuss below. A disagreement broke out within the Yishuv leadership regarding whether the central institutions should use Yishuv funds to support private enterprise. The private companies complained that the leadership did nothing to encourage shipping pioneers. They claimed that despite being based in private capital, their contribution to the Jewish economy and society in the Land of Israel was an important one, and thus the Jewish Agency, as a large customer of the foreign companies, should use its contacts and pressure Lloyd Triestino to cease its efforts against the Jewish companies.¹³⁷ The Travel Agencies’ Union in Tel Aviv also joined the efforts to lower Lloyd Triestino’s rates.¹³⁸ This struggle was a milestone in the Jewish shipping companies’ infiltration of Palestine’s shipping market. An advertisement published in the press by the union held a call to the Yishuv to travel on Jewish ships: Resident! Do not reject the Jewish maritime enterprises, because you are determining the existence of the nation and the state. It is your duty to aid Jewish shipping in all of its

 In the thirties, after the company recovered from the aftermath of the First World War, Lloyd Triestino once again held a place as one of the leading companies in in the world. Its fleet was at its peak, with eighty-five ships and routes to Europe, Asia, Africa, and Australia. The Jewish Agency and Yishuv leaders sailed consistently on Lloyd Triestino’s ships; the Jewish Agency’s Aliyah Department was reputed to be the company’s biggest client. For more, see Ran, Ships and Wharf, 32– 33.  Abba Hushi, Haifa Workers’ Council, Haifa, to Moshe Sharett, Jewish Agency Executive, Jerusalem [in Hebrew], 21 March 1935, IV-208-1-788-b, LI, Tel Aviv. Protocol from a meeting of the delegation representing the Travel Agencies’ Union in Tel Aviv with Hocherdof, director of Lloyd Triestino in Tel Aviv [in Hebrew], 16 June 1936, S11/C19, CZA, Jerusalem.  B. Herskowitz and L. Berkovits, Jewish Shipping Association, Tel Aviv, to the Jewish Agency, Jerusalem [in Hebrew], 25 May 1936, S11/C19, CZA, Jerusalem.  Protocol from a meeting of the delegates from the Travel Agencies’ Union in Tel Aviv with Hochdorf, director of Lloyd Triestino, Tel Aviv [in Hebrew], 16 June 1936, S11/C19, CZA, Jerusalem.

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forms by using its services. “Your brother shall live among you.” Travel on the Jewish ship Tel Aviv. Why would you reject your ships, the Har Zion and Har Carmel? Transport your goods on your ships: Alisa, Atid, Amal, and Richard Borchard. Know that the enemy and the competitor are aware of your rejection of the Jewish shipping enterprises, and they exploit your weakness. Know that the fate of the Jewish maritime enterprises is in your hands. Fulfill your duty to the nation and land.¹³⁹

The Yishuv leadership, on the other hand, was in no hurry to jeopardize its ties with Lloyd Triestino, the shipping company that brought the majority of the immigrants to the land at the time; quite the opposite. Sharett felt that the Yishuv could not afford to start a war against it when there was no possibility of organizing immigration to the Land of Israel without Lloyd’s ships. Announcements in the press and posters were, in his opinion, a mistake, as one could not have it both ways—both work with them and call to boycott them. In dealing with them, he felt, the relationship between the Yishuv and the Italian government must also be taken into account.¹⁴⁰ However, the rivalry with Lloyd Triestino was, it appears, not the only factor making things difficult for Palestine Shipping and the Tel Aviv. The ship was old, and was often in need of repairs and restoration; passenger traffic aboard the ship to the Land of Israel and from it slowed, as did immigration, in the years of the rioting; administrative expenses were too high; the company displayed a lack of professionalism, poor management, and a deficiency of working capital and was devoid of public support—all leading to the company taking losses.¹⁴¹ In the early days of the shipping company, in contrast, the appearance of the Tel Aviv had been accompanied by public ripples that the national institutes took part in, touting the importance of the enterprise. A number of the Yishuv leaders claimed that the Yishuv must make efforts to rescue the company for national reasons, viewing it as the beginning of the realization of the Zionist idea of con-

 A poster titled “El ha-Tsibur ha-Ivri,” Haifa, September 1936, signed by the Jewish Maritime League, S11/13, CZA, Jerusalem. Other bodies in the Yishuv put out similar calls. See “Hitsṭarfu le-Maḥane ha-Liga ha-Yamit ha-Ivrit!,” poster of the Jewish Shipping Commission of the Haifa Chamber of Commerce, IV-208-1-788b, LI, Tel Aviv; for Atid’s call to aid the Yishuv, see Rosenberg, Jewish Shipping.  Sharett saw a need to clarify that the Jewish Agency’s Political Department did not need to prove that it supported the use of Jewish ships but at the same time the department that he headed must look at the interests of the entire Yishuv. He also felt that the propaganda should take care in its language and style and use positive formulations, not inserting negative expressions that could be understood to contain a tone of enmity. Moshe Sharett to the Chamber of Commerce, Haifa [in Hebrew], 18 July 1935, IV-250-27-5-100, LI, Tel Aviv; Moshe Sharett to the Executive Committee of the Histadrut [in Hebrew], 4 August 1935, IV-250-27-5-100, LI, Tel Aviv.  Herman, Menahem Rivlin, 63; Hayam, Ships’ Tales, 119.

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quering maritime work, despite the fact that the company was privately owned. Prominent among them was David Remez, who stated that the Jewish Agency must support one enterprise of private initiative that we see as an important political state asset…. The ship Tel Aviv has been in existence for a year and a half; in that time, it has transferred ten thousand passengers and lost 40,000 Palestine pounds. The losses were taken on by the founders. No Yishuv institution invested a cent in this enterprise and no Jewish banking institution gave the enterprise credit…. The people of the Tel Aviv gathered Jewish seamen from all of the countries of the world, and from the deputy captain and the other officers to the sailors and other workers on the ship all are Jewish…. On the ship, 120 Jews work…. If the Tel Aviv falls, it will be no small task to rebuild this type of enterprise.¹⁴²

Abba Hushi tied the battle to save the company to the struggle for the land’s produce that was taking place at the time, claiming that the war over the land’s produce was also the war over the Jewish ship.¹⁴³ Ultimately, the efforts to save Palestine Shipping came to naught; its financial state continued to deteriorate. Two years after its purchase, the company could no longer keep the Tel Aviv. The Jewish Agency did not assist the company, primarily because it was not interested in entering into a conflict with governments that supported the national companies, such as Italy. The Yishuv leadership’s policy of eschewing the support of private enterprises from Yishuv funds, despite the pressure from public personas and leaders, ultimately led to the dis-

 Jewish Agency Executive meeting, 28 June 1936. Remez spoke often about the sale of the Tel Aviv; on another occasion, he said: “The owners of the company called for help…. They were willing to accept national authority, but no savior came. No savior. Not a partner savior, not a redeemer. Not an investing savior, nor a loaning savior, nor a redeeming savior” and the ship fell victim to “the equanimity of cold lovers”; quoted in Herman, Menahem Rivlin, 82.  Abba Hushi, Haifa Workers’ Council, Haifa, to the Histadrut’s Executive Committee [in Hebrew], 14 July 1935, IV-208-1-788b, LI, Tel Aviv. The Center for Local Produce was founded in 1936 and belonged to the Jewish National Council. The center led the struggle for national consumerism that developed in the Land of Israel primarily from the thirties. Its activity was directed at the manufacturer, merchant, and finally consumer. This was one of the Yishuv’s responses to Arab activity, which included acts of violence against the Yishuv’s growth, economic shutdown, and boycotting Jewish goods. The struggle for the land’s produce played an important role in the efforts to harness the economy for the benefit of the Zionist ideology in the national struggle evolving in the land at the time. Nonetheless, it should be noted that the center’s activities were on the receiving end of harsh criticism, as they expressed conflicting interests: for example, its activity contradicted the Mandate’s economic policy and the industrialists’ and importers’ interests, which had a variety of trade ties with foreign agents. For more on this, see Livni, Forgotten Struggle; Stern, “Mothers”; Shoham, “Separatist Consumption.”

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mantling of the company.¹⁴⁴ In September 1937 the Tel Aviv was removed from the list of the Land of Israel’s ships. It was sold to a Japanese company, Kitaga Asakichi, and sailed for the Far East. It appears to have sunk in the Indian Sea in 1944 during the Second World War.¹⁴⁵ The national disappointment with the demise of the Tel Aviv was equal to the national excitement and pride at its existence: the Tel Aviv was seen as a great missed opportunity, and the Yishuv leaders took upon themselves more than once at least some of the responsibility as they had not given public support to the enterprise that they viewed as having great economic and national importance.¹⁴⁶ The sale of the Tel Aviv was a bitter pill, burned in the national consciousness; it appears to have stood in the backdrop of efforts to establish a national shipping company, as we will see in the book’s fifth chapter.

Palestine Maritime Lloyd The other two prominent private shipping companies were, as noted, Palestine Maritime Lloyd and Atid, both cooperatives and both in possession of a number of ships. Palestine Maritime Lloyd shareholders were Jewish seamen, including Eliezer (Leizer) Berkovitz, a shipping man who had moved to the Land of Israel from Romania, engineer Emanuel Tuvim, and Ignazio Messina, a Jewish shipowner from Genoa in Italy.¹⁴⁷ The company purchased two mixed passenger-cargo steamships from the Italian partner, hoping to create a fixed shipping line between Haifa and Constanţa on the Black Sea: the Risveglio, which was renamed Har Zion, and Progresso, renamed Har Carmel. These were strong, sturdy ships, with a capacity of fifty-four thousand tons each, a speed of thirteen knots, and space for some four hundred tons of cargo apiece. Each of the ships, after being restored, was able to transport one hundred and ten passengers, forty in first class and seventy in tourist class.¹⁴⁸  An additional economic obstacle at the time was in the field of loans in Palestine, where it was impossible to raise significant capital in absence of a law regarding the mortgaging of ships and thus banks refrained from providing loans to companies and institutions occupied with the sea and ships. See Herman, Conquering a Route, 56.  Hayam, Ships’ Tales, 120.  Remez, Sea Spirit, 29 – 32.  Hayam, Ships’ Tales, 109 – 13.  Herman, Conquering a Route, 59. In 1937, a peak year was recorded in the transport of passengers on the Haifa–Constanţa line, with Palestine Maritime Lloyd transporting over five thousand passengers, constituting 23 percent of the passenger traffic on the line for that year, as opposed to the 3,950 transported in 1936. Cargo transport also rose at the time; instead of the thirty-

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The company established a number of principles that were meant to ground it as part of Jewish shipping: the company must be managed in a businesslike and professional manner; the company must integrate in the building of the land and serve the interests of the land; the company’s crucial capital must be Jewish, that is to say, it must remain Jewish-owned; the ships’ flags must be Jewish flags; the ships’ crews must be Jewish; and use must be made of the Land of Israel’s produce to supply the ships.¹⁴⁹ But the company did not always stand by its principles, primarily with regard to the hiring of Jewish crews and salary, and a number of conflicts arose between the company and the Haifa Workers’ Council.¹⁵⁰ Despite the conflicts, the company also saw achievements; it made efforts to recruit Jewish seamen and its activities constituted a number of the milestones in the evolution of Jewish shipping: Palestine Maritime Lloyd’s ships came to the official inauguration of the Tel Aviv port in May 1936; the Palestine Maritime League, or PML, held its founding conference in June 1937 on the deck of the Har Zion; and beginning in 1938 there was always a teacher on board the Har Zion to teach Hebrew to the crew. The ships were manned by Jewish crews, in an effort to observe the use of Hebrew only on the ships and take advantage of the ships for the teaching and training of Hebrew seamen. When the ships first arrived at Haifa’s port with Italian crewmen on board, a number of the non-professional crew members were replaced with Jews. At the end of 1937, it was reported that the company employed seventy Jews of its total one hundred workers. This was also the first company to employ a group of stevedores from Salonica in unloading its ships, and the first Hebrew company to transfer the stevedoreship to Palestine Lighterage and Supply Ltd., that had, as noted, been established at Haifa’s port in 1934.¹⁵¹ Har Zion and Har Carmel completed their service in the Land of Israel after a relatively brief period of time. In early 1938, when the Har Carmel anchored at the fuel port in Constanţa, a fire erupted; it was one of the ships to go up in

two thousand crates of citrus fruits in 1935 – 1936, the year 1936 – 1937 saw the transport of one hundred and thirty-three thousand crates. See B.-K. Meirovitz to E. Kaplan and Y. Gruenbaum, Tel Aviv [in Hebrew], 30 December 1938, S11/22, CZA, Jerusalem; undated report [in Hebrew], likely written by Bar-Kochba Meirovitz, S11/22, CZA, Jerusalem. On the Har Zion and Har Carmel as expressed in the marketing of Jewish shipping to the Land of Israel at the time of British rule, see Kohn and Cohen-Hattab, “Tourism Posters.”  Herman, Conquering a Route, 59 – 62; Hayam, Ships’ Tales, 109 – 15; Helpern, Revival, 337– 38; Gelbart, Jews and Seafaring, 78 – 80; Yarkoni, The Sea, 154– 57.  N. Wydra to E. Kaplan [in Hebrew], 22 November 1936, S11/14/B, CZA, Jerusalem.  Summary of 1937 in Hebrew shipping [in Hebrew], S11/14/B, CZA, Jerusalem

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flames.¹⁵² With the outbreak of the Second World War, the Har Zion was appropriated for service in the British fleet, but finished its service at the end of August 1940. On its way from Liverpool to the port in Savannah, Georgia, it was attacked by a German submarine; it was torpedoed and sank in the Atlantic with its thirtysix crew. One crew member was saved, a Cypriot who had served as a stoker. Among the fatalities were seventeen Jews.¹⁵³ During their service, the two ships made 150 trips on the Haifa–Constanţa– Haifa line, creating a constant Jewish line of cargo and passenger ships between the Land of Israel and Europe. They brought thirteen thousand people and played a significant role in moving cargo, especially citrus cargo exported to Romania and imported merchandise from Romania.¹⁵⁴ Over the years in which it was active, Palestine Maritime Lloyd encountered tough competition on the part of foreign companies, some of whom had broad governmental support. Its challenges were much like those that Palestine Shipping and its Tel Aviv encountered, but, in contrast, Palestine Maritime Lloyd was able to remain active until its ships were seized by the British navy.¹⁵⁵ During its three and a half years of existence prior to the Second World War, the company made 219 trips between Haifa and Constanţa, transferring 18,185 passengers. In terms of cargo, Palestine Maritime Lloyd took an average 40 percent of cargo in its years of activity, and 13.5 percent of passenger traffic each year.¹⁵⁶

 The company purchased another ship to replace it, giving it the name Miriam; however, on its second journey to England it was seized by the British fleet and when British troops began to be transferred to Europe it was sent to the northern part of the continent, where the British filled it with cement and sank it, along with other ships, in order to create a temporary breakwater at the anchorage for the invading boats; Hayam, Ships’ Tales, 112– 13.  Palestine Maritime Lloyd’s last ship was originally an immigrant ship named the Milos, which was caught by the British in 1939 and tied to the breakwater in Haifa. Two years later the British put it up for sale, and Palestine Maritime Lloyd purchased it, changing its name to Atzila (Noble). But it was a very old ship, and had undergone only partial repairs. Its first trip was to Port Said, where it was loaded with cargo for Cyprus. At a certain point the ship started to list starboard, and it overturned in the port, putting an end to Palestine Maritime Lloyd entirely. Yarkoni, The Sea, 156 – 57.  Survey of Palestine Maritime Lloyd [in Hebrew], Yam 2, February 1938, 3.  According to Zeev Hayam, Palestine Maritime Lloyd’s success was due to a combination of factors: its management was on a very high level, the service was good, its treatment of passengers was courteous, and the ships maintained a national and familial atmosphere; Hayam, Sea Routes, 14.  On these trips, the ships brought 11,002 cars of wood, 31,400 heads of cattle, and 2,050,000 chickens. Aside from these, the company brought 30,000 tons of general cargo and 385,000 crates of citrus fruits. In 1936, Lloyd was responsible for almost 60 percent of overall cargo traffic. See Herman, Conquering a Route, 62.

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Atid The third Jewish shipping company in the Land of Israel in the thirties was, as noted, the Atid Navigation Company Ltd. Its founders were the Borchard family, Jews who also owned the shipping company Fairplay, from Hamburg, Germany. They had been active in shipping from the early twentieth century in Europe’s North Sea, and moved their company to the Land of Israel when the Nazis rose to power and the situation in Europe became unstable. Atid was founded in the Land of Israel in 1934, and run by Jens Borchard, a lawyer by profession, who had previously been the secretary and a director of the Orient Shipping Line Co.¹⁵⁷ From its establishment, it attempted to employ Jewish crews on its ships and took pains to train Jewish sailors in special groups that were organized while they were still overseas.¹⁵⁸ With the founding of the Tel Aviv port, the company’s ships became a major factor in the new port’s solidification, and in its first days of unloading cargo on the shore they were nearly the only ones that regularly visited the new anchorage.¹⁵⁹ The company’s first ship was the Atid, which was joined by two cargo ships— Amal and Alisa—in 1935. Its lines in the early years ran through the Danube lands to Budapest and Vienna. One year in the company added the Richard Borchard, meant for the lengthier European lines;¹⁶⁰ however, it soon became clear that the longer lines were not profitable, and the company chose the ports in Galaţi and Brăila in southern Romania as the line’s final stops. Its pri-

 T. Ben-Nahum, “Hebrew Shore Shipping” [in Hebrew], Yam 6, 1938, 1. Orient Shipping Ltd. was founded in Haifa in 1934 by a group of Jews who had immigrated from Germany and was evidently the first attempt to establish a shipping company using the transfer agreement. It purchased two barges, the Dora and Carola, which it adapted to make them cargo ships, but its commercial achievements were poor; it soon became clear that the company could not raise working capital, and the Jewish Agency and Histadrut’s plans for involvement in the company did not come to fruition. The ships were sold, and at the end of 1934 the company was dismantled. See Ran, “German Immigration,” 54– 55; Yarkoni, The Sea, 19 – 20, 48 – 49, 198. On Jens Borchard, see Berndt, Notable Citizens, 9 – 12.  So it appears, for example, in a letter to the Jewish Agency, in which Borchard complains that because of the port authority’s delay in putting them forward for the officers’ examinations they cannot employ Jews with appropriate skills, asking for the Jewish Agency’s intervention on the subject. See J. Borchard to the Jewish Agency, Haifa [in Hebrew], 24 February 1936, S11/24, CZA, Jerusalem.  PML center meeting [in Hebrew], S11/19, CZA, Jerusalem. In the first year of the port’s existence, Atid’s ships anchored there sixty-two times, and the company took first place in general traffic at the port; Rosenberg, Jewish Shipping.  Rosenberg, Jewish Shipping; publicity pamphlet with Atid’s schedule of ships’ journeys [in Hebrew], Summer 1936, IV-250-27-2-246, LI, Tel Aviv.

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mary activity was shore service in the eastern Mediterranean, and its ships regularly docked at ports in Turkey, Lebanon, Egypt, and Cyprus.¹⁶¹ In 1936, the company moved fifty thousand tons of merchandise and employed forty Jewish workers.¹⁶² The company was registered in Palestine; it flew the Land of Israel’s flag and claimed to be making efforts to involve Jews in the various jobs on its ships and to trade in the land’s produce when possible.¹⁶³ But Atid was also competing with veteran foreign companies that were active in the eastern Mediterranean as well as with Arab ships sailing nearby whose freight charges were lower. The company found itself in economic and administrative straits, and the company was forced to retire the Richard Borchard and Alisa from use before the Second World War, continuing to operate only the Atid and Amal. ¹⁶⁴ Atid’s vessels were commandeered in the Second World War for Britain’s Royal Navy, and transferred troops and supplies to the various battles, including a perilous one between Alexandria and the besieged Tobruk. In appreciation, the navy allowed Atid to purchase a number of immigrant ships and boats that had been seized by the British for a relatively low price.¹⁶⁵ Not all of the company’s ships survived the war; however, its best ships were not sunk or damaged, and at the war’s end the company’s economic state remained good. It appears that the professionalism, the experience, and the international ties of the family from running Fairplay, the parent company in Hamburg, made it possible for Atid to survive under the difficult conditions in which it operated. Over the years be-

 A. Ben-Yaakov, “On Atid” [in Hebrew], Yam 6, 1938, 1– 2.  Bar-Kochba Meirovitz (most probably) [in Hebrew], September 1937, S11/14/B, CZA, Jerusalem.  A. Ben-Yaakov, “On Atid” [in Hebrew], Yam 6, 1938, 1– 2. The company committed to the PML to employ a large number of Jewish sailors and workers, and the PML committed to aiding the company by using propaganda and influencing a number of agents, such as the importers and exporters, to use Atid’s services. See the testimony of Yair Barker, who worked on the Amal and Atid for two years prior to World War II; Yair Barker, interview [in Hebrew], 11 May 1995, The Herzl Institute for the Study of Zionism, University of Haifa (hereafter: HI), Haifa.  Yarkoni, The Sea, 198. For detailed accounts about the Amal and the work on board near the end of the Second World War, see Averbach, Agitated Sea, 26 – 41.  These were the Alisa (previously Liesel), Antar (previous Las Perlas, torpedoed in 1941 by an Italian submarine), Amos (previously Artemissia), Amatos (which ran aground in 1942 at the port of Latakia and was destroyed), and two sailboats—the Agoor (sold in 1942 due to high costs) and Adina. The company also owned a motorized sailboat, the Lili (sunk by an Italian submarine) and the boat Mahsan (which sank in a storm in Egypt’s waters in 1943). See Herman, Conquering a Route, 54– 55; Hayam, Sea Routes, 59 – 61.

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fore the establishment of the state, the company operated nine motorized ships and four sailboats at different times.¹⁶⁶ The operations of all three privately founded companies—Palestine Shipping, Palestine Maritime Lloyd, and Atid—demonstrate that in contrast with the years prior to 1934, there was an awakening in the field of shipping and a five-year span of private commercial shipping, until the outbreak of the Second World War and the resultant incapacitation of commercial shipping.¹⁶⁷ The change was expressed in the volume of cargo transferred in the land’s ports at the time. Between 1934 and 1939, it reached 8.123 million tons of import and export not including fuel, in contrast with 2.886 million tons in 1926 – 1933.¹⁶⁸ Nevertheless, the role of Jews remained negligible. Dozens of Romanian, Italian, Polish, and French passenger ships—and ships from other countries—worked regularly until the end of the thirties in Palestine, the Black Sea, and southern Europe, in contrast with the few ships that were privately owned by Jews.¹⁶⁹ Only six of the 589 ships that arrived in Palestine in the five years prior to the war were Jewish ones, and they brought only an approximate 4 percent of the cargo and 6 percent of the passengers that came by sea. This is in reverse proportion to the relative portion of the Yishuv in the Land of Israel’s Jewish foreign trade, which was roughly three quarters of the import, two thirds of the export, and 80 percent of the passenger traffic.¹⁷⁰ The Jewish companies faced stronger and more experienced companies, some of which were governmental or received significant government support. However, the Jewish Agency’s priorities in distributing resources placed shipping low on the scale. The decision makers at the time preferred fields such as agricultural settlement and transportation infra-

 “Atid at the End of the War” [in Hebrew], Yam, January 1946, 4– 5. For more on Atid in the Mandate period, see Ran, Ships and Wharf, 39 – 41; on Atid’s activities after the founding of the state see Yarkoni, The Sea, 199.  Ran, “German Immigration,” 69 – 71.  Stern, “Port in Haifa,” in Naor and Ben-Artzi, Haifa, 76.  Outline for discussion on proposed plan for arranging Jewish maritime transport [in Hebrew], 26 April 1944, S74/160, CZA, Jerusalem; F. O. Rogers, Port Manager, Memorandum on the present prospects for new steamship in Palestine, 21 August 1945, S74/56, CZA, Jerusalem.  N. Wydra, Land of Israel maritime transportation [in Hebrew], 24 September 1946, S74/56, CZA, Jerusalem; Zim Integrated Shipping Services Ltd., Registration according to the companies’ regulations 1929 – 1936, undated (most probably second half of 1945) [in Hebrew], S74/184/1, CZA, Jerusalem.

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structure to isolated settlements over developing the sea and shipping in particular.¹⁷¹ In those years, payments made to foreign companies for transport and travel grew, and thus much capital streamed out of the land’s borders, shipping became a source of income for no small number of families on the Yishuv, and the dearth of ships for immigration and the total dependence of Jewish shipping on foreign shipping at the time became more pronounced. This gradually spurred the Yishuv leadership to action, especially during periods of crisis, and a change in approach to the national role of shipping began to take shape. The leadership slowly began to recognize that shipping must be supported by state funds, or—in the case of the Yishuv in the Land of Israel—national institutions.¹⁷² Nonetheless, by the Second World War and during the war years, the idea of a national shipping company was not advanced.

The Founding of the Jewish Agency’s Maritime and Fisheries Department One of the first milestones in the leadership’s recognition of the sea’s importance was in a speech given by David Ben-Gurion in Haifa in mid-1932, in which he said: The land alone will not absorb or contain all of the returnees from the Diaspora. Small is the land and many are its devotees; neither is it entirely empty…. In terms of settlement, economics, and politics the Mediterranean Sea should be seen not as its border, but as the continuation of our land…. Thousands of hands, and after the thousands, tens of thousands, will be necessary for the expanding sea work—unloaders and loaders, packers and porters, sailors and mariners. Should this labor be done only by others? Our land’s sea also awaits its redemption, just as the land awaited and awaits it. We were moved from the sea when we were distanced from the land. We were city folk and land dwellers for centuries. We traversed sea caravans as passengers, but never as transporters…. Shall the men of the land be prevented from being sailors, fishermen, mariners, swimmers, rowers, navigators, divers, and skippers?… Without the sea there is no outlet, no space, no platform for expanding. The Mediterranean Sea is the natural bridge tying our small land to the wide world. The sea is an or-

 Dr. Wydra to E. Kaplan [in Hebrew], 16 July 1937, S11/14/B, CZA, Jerusalem; N. Wydra, Land of Israel maritime transportation [in Hebrew], 24 September 1946, S74/56, CZA, Jerusalem; Herman, Conquering a Route, 133.  Outline for discussion on proposed plan for arranging Jewish maritime transport [in Hebrew], 26 April 1944, S74/160, CZA, Jerusalem; Y. Zeva, “Establishing a Commercial National Fleet” [in Hebrew], Mishmar, April 7, 1947, 2.

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ganic, economic, and political part of our land. And it is still nearly empty, nearly free. The force that pushed us from the city to the village pushes us from the land to the sea…. And the youth in the land, especially those that live on the seashore, whether in village or city, will see in the waves what the man of the field sees in clods of earth: a source of life and strength and salvation. In the sea culture, from maritime sport to the sailor’s labor, we will create a new Jew who will complete and alter the type of Jew created in working the land. We will remember: our land is made of land and sea.¹⁷³

These words of Ben-Gurion’s—the emphasis on the sea’s settlement, economic, and political potential; the view of the sea as the continuation of the land and as a space that connects to the world rather than a natural border; and the equating of sea workers’ status with that of the agricultural pioneers—symbolize the beginning of the change in consciousness regarding the sea in the Yishuv’s central leadership. Indeed, in the Nineteenth Zionist Congress, which took place in 1935 in Lucerne, Switzerland, the congress delegates recommended establishing a maritime department within the Jewish Agency: “The Zionist Congress requests that the Executive examine this, that the Yishuv and other Zionist institutions give all necessary support to Jewish shipping enterprises, to their development and expansion—and for that sake establish a special department for sea works in Jerusalem, which will coordinate the activities necessary for the fortification and expansion of Jewish sea enterprises, especially the training of sea workers in the land and the Diaspora.”¹⁷⁴ The Jewish Agency founded the Maritime and Fisheries Department in 1936, and in so doing signaled its first recognition of the importance of developing the sector alongside agriculture. Its establishment should be viewed as the most significant stage in the evolution of the central Zionist institutions’ interest in the maritime world.¹⁷⁵ The department was affiliated with the Zionist Executive’s Department of Labor, Bar-Kochba Meirovitz was appointed its director, and one year later a special department was founded in Haifa under the leadership of Dr. Naftali Wydra, who ran it for many years (1936 – 1947).¹⁷⁶ The official goals of the

 Ben-Gurion, Memoirs, 323 – 30.  Zionist Executive, Nineteenth Zionist Congress, 32.  The department was formed, as noted, as a result of the Congress’s resolution cited above; however, attempts to clarify who led the establishment of the department in reality and which forces and interests in the Zionist Executive played a role using the department’s archive (located in the Zionist Archive), came up empty.  Herman, Conquering a Route, 55. Bar-Kochba Meirovitz (1896 – 1974), born in Rishon Lezion, was a Turkish commander in the First World War, and from 1921 worked in the Construction and Public Works Department of the Histadrut, which later became Solel Boneh. He was one of the

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Maritime Department were formulated generally: to develop the idea of conquest of the sea within the Jewish public; to come to the aid of early attempts at Jewish shipping and fishery; and to reinforce the Jewish forces in the land’s ports.¹⁷⁷ Aside from establishing operating bodies that will be detailed below, one of the new Maritime Department’s first practical steps to promote its goals was tied to the development of the unloading work at the Tel Aviv port and the entry of Jewish workers to new branches of work at the Haifa port. The department gave loans to aid the absorption of some one hundred Jewish workers at the Haifa and Tel Aviv ports who worked in sailing, shipping, and stevedoreship.¹⁷⁸

The Establishment of Nahshon, the Palestine Maritime League, and the Nautical School The Maritime Department stood behind the establishment of a number of bodies whose purpose was first and foremost national rather than economic, though economic considerations also played a part. The first was Nahshon, a shipping company jointly owned by the Jewish Agency and the Histadrut. Nahshon was established at the initiative of David Remez, secretary of the Histadrut, who was possessed of a strong maritime sensibility. Nahshon’s establishment was considered one of the primary attempts to found a Jewish national shipping company. The company was established with starting capital raised by Golda Meyerson (Meir), who was a member of the Histadrut’s Executive Committee at the time and was sent by Remez to raise funds for the founding of Nahshon in Jewish

founders of Zim, and after the establishment of the State ran the port, sea, and air services in the Ministry of Transport; see Shavit, Goldstein, and Be’er, Biographical Dictionary, 302. Naftali Heinz Wydra (1909 – 1987) was a pioneer in the shipping sector in Israel, born in Leipzig, Germany. He immigrated to the Land of Israel in 1933 after completing a doctorate in law at Leipzig University. He settled in Haifa, where he first ran a ships and moving agency (1933 – 1936), and in 1936 was appointed director of the Maritime Department of the Jewish Agency in Haifa. In 1945, he was one of the founders of Zim, and in 1948 was responsible for transferring the port from British auspices to the State of Israel’s authority. See Herman, Conquering a Route, 132– 134, 143, 147, 163, 168; Shavit, Goldstein, and Be’er, Biographical Dictionary, 185; Yarkoni, The Sea, 106.  Bar-Kochba Meirovitz, “Kibush ha-Yam,” undated (most probably late 1937), S11/13, CZA, Jerusalem.  Bar-Kochba Meirovitz (most probably), report on the Jewish Agency’s Maritime Department and suggestions for opening maritime enterprises, Tel Aviv [in Hebrew], 18 January 1937, S11/14/ B, CZA, Jerusalem.

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communities around the United States. The impetus to found the company was the establishment of the Tel Aviv port and the desire to broaden Jewish maritime sovereignty using a Jewish national shipping company, owned by the Yishuv, as Remez said at the time: “If we have a port, we must also have ships.”¹⁷⁹ Nahshon was, practically speaking, the vessel through which the Histadrut invested its part—in the building of the Tel Aviv port, in the Ogen cooperative at the Haifa port for passenger transport from pier to ship, in the founding of Prika at Tel Aviv’s port, and especially in the purchase of mechanized boats that were involved in the development of Jewish fishing, as we will see below.¹⁸⁰ The second body established by the Maritime Department, which was under its auspices, was the Palestine Maritime League (PML). Initially, with the outbreak of riots and the Yishuv’s growing recognition of the importance of the sea to its sovereignty, the first branch of the public association was founded in the autumn of 1936, adopting the name Jewish Maritime League, and headed by the secretary of the Haifa Workers’ Council, Abba Hushi. Its primary goal was to create a popular movement both in the Jewish community in the land and in the Zionist movement in the Diaspora, a movement that would encompass masses of Jewish youth and citizens and organize them around the idea of conquest of work at sea and the Hebrew ports, encouraging the various Jewish initiatives in the maritime realm as much as possible.¹⁸¹ So for example, in a poster put out by the Jewish Maritime League in Haifa in September 1936 the Yishuv was called to travel only on the existing Jewish ships—Tel Aviv, Har Zion, Har Carmel, Alisa, Atid, Amal, and Richard Borchard—helping them subsist. This was the backdrop to the crisis that the three Jewish-owned private shipping companies found themselves in, due to the serious competition from foreign companies. The poster noted: “The Jewish Maritime League, whose foundations were laid recently, will instill in the entire nation the love of Jewish maritime enterprises, it will force you to recognize your responsibility for them and their existence by

 Erez, David Remez, 255 – 56, 313 – 14; Yarkoni, The Sea, 178 – 79. At its height, Nahshon owned eleven ships, and, among other things, it was a partner in the building of the Tel Aviv port.  Prika Ltd., founded much like Ogen, which was supported by the Jewish Agency and active in the Haifa port, had a monopoly on boating and porterage at the Tel Aviv port. In 1938, it had sixty barges, seven tugboats, and three passenger boats. See Stern, “Tel-Aviv Port,” 127; Hayam, Ships’ Tales, 133; Ran, Ships and Wharf, 48.  “Tafḳidei ha-Liga ṿe-Darkhei Peulata,” Jewish Maritime League Pamphlet, Haifa, undated, J1/1872, CZA, Jerusalem.

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using only their services.”¹⁸² After the league in Haifa, an additional branch of the Jewish Maritime League was founded in Tel Aviv later that same year.¹⁸³ At the time, the Yishuv’s central leadership was no longer concealing its central political intention: establishing maritime leagues was meant to serve as a tool with which the Yishuv leadership could coordinate all maritime activity—including that of the Revisionist movement.¹⁸⁴ At the initiative of both leagues— that of Haifa and that of Tel Aviv—and with the support of the Maritime Department, the Palestine Maritime League was founded. It was meant to serve as an umbrella organization that would coordinate the activity of the leagues with the leading Yishuv institutions using the Maritime Department, and in so doing to also coordinate the activities of the different leagues and empower them. During the first assembly of the PML, the two branches numbered nearly 4,500 members.¹⁸⁵ The organizers wished to give the founding assembly a historic status that would inspire public resonance and make its mark on the land, and thus decided to hold it on sea and not on land. In June 1937, the PML’s founding assembly was held on Palestine Maritime Lloyd’s Har Zion on a trip from Haifa through Cyprus to the Tel Aviv port.¹⁸⁶ On the deck were some 140 individuals,

 Poster titled “El ha-Tsibur ha-Ivri,” Jewish Maritime League, Haifa [in Hebrew], September 1936, S11/13, CZA, Jerusalem.  General appeal of the Jewish Maritime League, Tel Aviv branch, to join the league because “it is the obligation of every person in the Yishuv who recognizes the importance of the redemption of the sea in these trying times to join as a member of the Jewish Maritime League…and to thus observe the commandment of redeeming the sea.” Addressed to Yitzhak Zeitlin, Tel Aviv [in Hebrew], 20 June 1937, 1898/103 – 11, LI, Tel Aviv.  D. Remez, General Organization of Jewish Workers (Histadrut), to Y. Ben-Zvi, Jewish National Council Executive, Jerusalem [in Hebrew], 26 November 1936, J1/1872, CZA, Jerusalem.  M. Rivlin, “Four Years of the Palestine Maritime League” [in Hebrew], ha-Olam, April 3, 1941. Rivlin claimed that the very idea of a popular-public organization for the cultivation of maritime awareness and maritime activity was not at the time an invention of the Land of Israel’s Jews. In a number of other young states founded in Europe after the First World War, maritime leagues were founded by the governments, who invested many resources in order to buttress the states’ maritime power. Prominent among these was the maritime league in Poland, which worked to garner broad public support for the government’s efforts to establish a naval fleet and develop the home port in Gdynia.  Participants in the first assembly signed the PML’s charter, which was written on parchment. In the assembly, speeches were made, and those wondering about the name were told by Samuel Kaplinsky that the word ḥevel (league or association) also meant ḥever, league, signifying the measurement used at sea, and that the term rav ḥovel (captain) was related to the same word. Additional intepretations, in his words, were ḥavelei leida (birth pangs), ḥevel bene’imim (legacy or territory) meaning a place, and ḥevlei mashiaḥ (pangs of Messiah). He claimed that the name symbolized the Yishuv’s war for its place at sea, the struggle to guarantee the nation a maritime legacy. See Yam [in Hebrew], April-May 1947, 8 – 13.

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representing a cross-section of people of action and intellectuals from the Yishuv; with the end of the assembly, it was decided that the Palestine Maritime League would be founded and headed by Shmuel Tolkowsky.¹⁸⁷ The PML’s founding resolution determined its goals and working principles: (1) organizing propaganda for developing Jewish seamanship and coordinating all bodies involved; (2) aiding the organization of advanced professional training for Jewish seamen, founding clubs and lectures for them, and publishing scholarly maritime research; (3) providing support to maritime sports leagues; (4) encouraging existing professional academic institutions to open maritime majors; (5) developing the sector of building sailing vessels and training professionals in that field; and (6) helping develop Jewish fishery.¹⁸⁸ At the end of 1937, the PML had five branches consisting of a total of roughly nine thousand members. Funding for the PML’s activities came from three central sources: contributions from institutions and individuals; contributions from Jewish importers; and “passenger coupons,” a small tax on buying tickets on a ship. But in light of the great goals the PML had set for itself, it was clear from the start that the tasks ahead of the Yishuv in maritime activity were larger than it could fulfill itself; it must reach out to Jews overseas for support. The PML’s first activity overseas was in Poland, where the PML branch was founded in January 1938, with secondary branches in provincial towns. It held, among other things, the fishing academy in Gdynia, and recruited financial aid for the founding of a fishermen’s group called Gordonia-Maapilim, which moved to the Land of Israel and settled near Atlit (to be discussed further later on). The outbreak of the Second World War and the devastation of Polish Jewry led to the closing of the branch. In April 1938 the PML’s British committee was founded in England, a partner in recruiting experts and in the plan to found the nautical school, which we will soon see in greater detail. Near the end of that year, PML branches were founded in South Africa, first in Cape Town and then in Johannesburg, and they took upon themselves the funding of scholarships for students at the nautical school.¹⁸⁹

 Yarkoni, The Sea, 115 – 16. In the Twentieth Zionist Congress, held in Zurich in 1937, the Congress “welcomed the founding of the Palestine Maritime League (Jewish Maritime League), that created an atmosphere of dedication and public activity around the first maritime enterprises, and calls the nation’s masses in the land and overseas to unite around the maritime league in order to fortify it”; Zionist Executive, Twentieth Zionist Congress, 324.  Pomrock, “Israel Maritime League,” in Newman, Eshel, Pomrock, and Raviv, Israel and the Sea.  M. Rivlin, “Four Years to the Palestine Maritime League” [in Hebrew], ha-Olam, April 3, 1941, 410 – 11; Herman, Conquering a Route, 109 – 15; Eshel, Campaign, 22.

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The PML saw its central function as promoting two main goals: first, to inspire among Jewish youth, in the land and abroad, the love of the sea; second, to educate seafarers in the various maritime professions. Its communal workers felt that one of the prime reasons for the diminished Jewish interest in sea sectors was the lack of knowledge about the sea amongst the nation’s members—and thus the lack of love for it. To reinforce the involvement of Zionist institutions in the different sea professions, then, publicity played a big part in the PML’s work in its early days. By the Second World War’s onset it had founded a number of advertising platforms that served as tools for expressing the idea of conquest of the sea: the Yam (sea) pamphlet was published monthly; El ha-Yam (To the Sea), a wall bulletin, was posted on bulletin boards in many schools; the Palestine Maritime League publishing house published professional and historical literature on the history of shipping and seafaring in the land and overseas and translated nautical belles lettres; and an internal missive was published by the PML center in Tel Aviv and distributed to communal workers in the branches.¹⁹⁰ The books that were published by the PML in the second half of the thirties were written by a number of Yishuv members who were closely involved in the maritime world at the time. One prominent trend in their writing was the attempt to lay historical foundations for the ties between Jews and the world of the sea through the generations, obviously intending to deepen the idea of conquest of the sea as part of the renewing Jewish pioneering spirit and to ground the Yishuv’s evolving maritime awareness.¹⁹¹ In the early years, the PML was recognized by the Jewish National Council’s Education Department as the exclusive organization for maritime education in schools. The relationship between the PML and the Yishuv’s educational institutions, and the importance attributed to maritime education in the school system at that time, is evident in a notice circulated by the education department to school principals about the distribution of El ha-Yam and the use of it in the schools under its supervision:¹⁹²

 Report, 1 January 1938 – 1 June 1939, preceding the general assembly of the PML in Tel Aviv, appendix to issue [in Hebrew], Yam 13, April–May 1939. El ha-Yam, for example, was printed in twelve hundred copies and sent to schools in the Land of Israel and various youth movements. See Yam 3 [in Hebrew], March 1938, 4. Additional activities and the involvement of the PML in the different maritime fields taking place during the war and after it will be discussed in the coming chapters.  For a selection of examples on this claim, see Tolkowsky, Jews and the Sea; Patai, Jewish Seafaring; Wydra, Fishing; Gelbart, Jews and Seafaring; Tolkowsky, Back to the Sea.  Y. Berman, “Temporary Management of the Education Department, Jewish National Council” [in Hebrew], February 14, 1938 (notice 111/47/2330), quoted in Yam 4 (1938), 1.

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Dear school principals…. Recently the interest in questions related to the sea generally and the Land of Israel’s seas more particularly has been growing amongst the children. The children visit the port, read in newspapers about the Tel Aviv port, about the conquest of the sea, about the development of fishing, etc., and it is proper that the school should come to their aid, affording them information on these questions and directing their interest to the desired channel…. The information on the sea should also be given to the children as an integral part of the school’s curriculum and within the normal process of teaching.

The establishment of the promotional platforms and the PML’s prominent activity in the field of education were meant to emphasize that behind the overt goals for which the PML was founded stood the Jewish Agency’s Maritime Department. Its overarching goal: to exert authority over the expanding maritime activity, especially that belonging to the sports associations and the Zevulun Seafarers’ Association, active in the country at the time, and thus to spread as far as possible its patronage over maritime training and the growing educational component that accompanied the activity.¹⁹³ The PML promoted swimming lessons at sports associations and amongst schoolchildren, armed the maritime athletic associations with sailing boats, and took pains to hold training as well. In Haifa, the PML established the central platform for all of the athletic associations. This included the Sea Scouts, which did not have a patron organization like Hapoel, Maccabi, or Zevulun; after a hurried negotiation the Sea Scouts became the PML Sea Scouts. The PML also established the sailing clubs in Haifa and Tel Aviv. PML days were organized for youth, activity that spread to adults as well. For a number of years, the PML organized a “Sea Day,” which became a public display with mass gatherings in cities and a special maritime demonstration in Haifa.¹⁹⁴ The establishment of the Maritime Department and the bodies acting on its behalf in the thirties, as well as the efforts to coordinate athletic maritime activity under its auspicies, stemmed from two factors: (1) the Yishuv leadership’s growing recognition of the importance of the sea to the developing Zionist enterprise and the crystallizing national political-Zionist perception on the subject; (2) the desire to expand the central institutions’ reins of control over the evolving social-economic patterns of the Yishuv, as part of an institutional-socialist view

 Journal of the Palestine Maritime League secretariat, discussions about modifying athletic maritime methods and plans of action customary at the different sports organizations [in Hebrew], November–December 1937, J1/1872, CZA, Jerusalem.  Yam [in Hebrew], June – July 1938, 4; Hayam, Ships’ Tales, 96; Herman, Conquering a Route, 116. Sea Day was held on the twenty-third of Iyar, the day on which, in 1936, the government permit to load and unload at the port in Tel Aviv was given. For more on Sea Day, see the next chapter.

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that conflicted with the private intiatitive, perceived for the most part as the embodiment of capitalism, as anti-institutional, and as threatening. In this way, one of the prominent milestones in the PML’s work in the years preceding the Second World War was its cooperation in the building and maintenance of a Jewish nautical academy, thus realizing one of the company’s founding resolutions. The PML promoted the advanced training of personnel, as well as the most progressive methods in global shipping at the time, in order to impart the sea professions to Jewish sailors in the country in an organized fashion, all in advance of filling new positions in the maritime world and the establishment of a Jewish fleet.¹⁹⁵ The Jewish Agency’s Maritime Department established a three-member committee to review the proposal for a nautical school: Dr. Shlomo Bardin, principal of the vocational high school next to the Technion, who worked tirelessly to establish a maritime division within it; Captain Zeev Hayam; and engineer Emanuel Tuvim. After consulting with the Mandate government’s maritime experts in Palestine, commercial fleet experts in London, and other professionals in Palestine, the committee formed a proposal for a curriculum and practicum for the maritime academy. This was modified to accord with the governmental exam requirements for second mate certification for the students in the sailing division, after a three-year apprenticeship aboard a ship, and for second engineer certification for the students of the marine mechanics department, after a two-year internship in a workshop and an additional year and a half aboard a ship.¹⁹⁶ It was resolved that the Technion’s vocational school would establish a department named “The Nautical School next to the Technion in Haifa,” in which youth would be trained for sea professions. The curriculum at the school would be four years long and there would be four divisions: sailing, mechanics, shipbuilding, and radio operation. The prerequisite for acceptance to the school would be eight years of elementary school and the age of acceptance would be fourteen to sixteen; for sailing and mechanics, precedence would be given to younger students, aged fourteen to fifteen, due to the extensive training period required. Students in the sailing track would work on a ship for three years after completing their theoretical studies. Afterwards, the students would return to the school for a few months to take exams, which would take place around age twenty or twen-

 Bar-Kochba Meirovitz (most probably) [in Hebrew], September 1937, S11/14/B, CZA, Jerusalem.  “The Nautical School next to the Hebrew Technion in Haifa” [in Hebrew], Yam 8, September 1938, 1– 2; The naval academy next to the Technion, Nissan 1944, G-5/1744, ISA, Jerusalem. For firsthand testimony about the committee and its resolutions, see Hayam, Ships’ Tales, 141– 45.

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ty-one. Students in the marine mechanics department would need to work for two years in one of the country’s large workshops and for another year and a half aboard a ship. As noted, those completing their studies in sailing or mechanics could take the exam to become second mates or second engineers given by the board of trade in London. Students in the shipbuilding and radio operating divisions could begin working in their fields at age eighteen, after completing their studies; no internship was required.¹⁹⁷ The plan was approved by the British, and the nautical school opened in Haifa on October 18, 1938. It had three partners: the Jewish Agency, the PML, and the Technion. The first class had thirty-seven students, and its first principal was Dr. Bardin. The Jewish Agency and the PML both committed to giving 1,000 Palestine pounds per year to fund the activities. The PML also promised to help the school attain the necessary equipment for the study of sailing. The hope was that the PML’s British committee would help with this, primarily by providing a ship for training and conscripting a British sailing officer to head the school’s sailing division.¹⁹⁸ The board of governors and trustees of the PML in London did indeed help with the funding, and also attained the Cap Pilar, donated by Adrian Seligman of London, for use as a training ship for the new school; however, with the outbreak of the war, the ship could not reach the Land of Israel at the designated time.¹⁹⁹ The PML in London was involved in bringing Captain Robert Stevenson Miller as captain; he came to the Land of Israel in January 1939 and headed the sailing department for one year, until he was called back to Britain to serve in the British navy on the eve of the war.²⁰⁰ With the arrival  Minutes from PML center meeting [in Hebrew], 10 January 1938, J1/1872, CZA, Jerusalem; Lt. D. S. Miller, “The Nautical School: Its Plan and Equipment” [in Hebrew], Yam 14, 1939, 1; announcement from the Jewish Agency’s Maritime Department [in Hebrew], Yam 1, January 1938, 2.  “The Nautical School next to the Hebrew Technion in Haifa” [in Hebrew], Yam 8, September 1938, 1– 2; “The Nautical School Has Opened” [in Hebrew], Yam 9, October – November 1938, 1; for a description of the opening of the first year, see “Nautical School in Haifa” [in Hebrew], El ha-Yam, October 1938.  The ship never reached the Land of Israel. It was neglected and rotted, and eventually burned in 1966 in an anchorage near London. For more on Adrian Seligman, see Yarkoni, The Sea, 111– 12.  Inge Kaplinski’s lecture on the nautical school at the Palestine Maritime League’s convention [in Hebrew], 9 March 1941, S74/253, CZA, Jerusalem. Robert Stevenson Miller (1907– 1966) was not Jewish, but was tied to modern Jewish shipping in its early years. He joined the British navy in 1924 and served as an officer until 1938. Between January and September in 1939, he served as the first director of the sailing department in the nautical school in Haifa. With the outbreak of the war, he was once again recruited, working in maritime operations in various arenas around the world; by the end of the war he was a commander. At the end of the war, he returned

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of Captain Miller, procedures were established for the lives of the cadets. The daily work began; each morning a role call was held in the school courtyard. The need to give expression to external appearance arose, and unique uniforms were designed; the new regulations dictated that cadets must wear them. A number of months after the opening of the school year, Miller published regulations for the students at the nautical school, in which the regime and discipline of the cadets were set out.²⁰¹ In assessing the PML’s activities, opinions were divided: There were voices that claimed that for most of its years it attempted to hold a leading role in the world of shipping, but mostly failed—primarily in its attempts to be an important financial body in the maritime world by fundraising from overseas. This side stated that ultimately the PML had limited its activity to nautical training, in which it had a certain amount of success.²⁰² Others felt that the PML was a primary instrument in the laying of maritime groundwork and its development, which to a great degree was the reason behind the later evolution of national shipping.²⁰³ Either way, the establishment of the Jewish maritime leagues, and the PML later on, were driven in no small part by political motivations within the Jewish Agency and the central Yishuv leadership institutions’ attempts to dominate the educational forum and give it a national bent. This was a response to the educational activities in the nautical world that were not linked to a similar body—for example, those of Zevulun, which was headed, it was claimed, by “Revisionists and other elements from the reactionary landowners, which clearly oppose national authority.”²⁰⁴ to Palestine to his previous job for a short period—but between 1945 and 1948 the British decided to remove British citizens from Palestine. In the summer of 1947, he returned to Palestine secretly, wanting to take part in the building of a Jewish navy in the young country. He joined Zim and was appointed captain of the Kedmah (on Zim and Kedmah, see below, chapter 5). Later, when building began in Germany with reparations money, Captain Miller was the first supervisor and first manager of Zim’s construction office in Germany; Yam [in Hebrew], August–September 1946, 12; Yarkoni, The Sea, 167– 68. For a firsthand account of his love for Jewish shipping, see his speech to the school’s students aboard the Voladora [in Hebrew], 4 September 1946, S74/ 150, CZA, Jerusalem.  Binot, Jubilee, 6 – 8.  Yarkoni, The Sea, 116.  Herman, Conquering a Route, 117.  As arises from Abba Hushi’s response to the Hehalutz Center in Berlin when asked for his opinion on the founding of a Zevulun branch in the same city. Hushi felt that the proposal should be rejected because the Zevulun members in the Land of Israel looked askance at the creation of the Palestine Maritime League, primarily because the league was under the complete authority of the Jewish Agency and Zionist Organization, while the founders and leaders of Zevulun were Revisionists; see Abba Hushi, Haifa, to A. Tarshish, Hehalutz Center, Berlin [in He-

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The Purchase of the First Mechanized Fishing Boats With regard to the world of fishery, the Maritime Department set itself three primary principles: (1) fishing must become a sector equivalent to land-based agriculture; (2) mechanized fishing methods should be used wherever possible; and (3) for now, work should be conducted using existing fishing methods, but with experience, techniques should be sought to upgrade working methods as much as possible.²⁰⁵ The department had equipment, training, funding, and the ability to pay for a day’s work at its disposal for as long as the sector could not carry itself financially for the fishermen. The experience gained in the twenties and early thirties taught the department that the fisheries sector needed to work on a number of planes in order to firmly entrench the sector in the Yishuv: buying boats, helping build fishing villages, supporting fishermen’s organizations through mutual assistance in joint buying and selling, and working to train and teach the subject of fishery in a professional and in-depth manner.²⁰⁶ The first step in renewing fishery was made by the institutions with the purchase of a motor boat for deepwater trawling.²⁰⁷ The assumption was that the work on mechanized boats would help the Jewish fishermen succeed in the way the Italians—working using the same method near the shores of the land over the previous ten years—had.²⁰⁸ The first Jewish trawler was the Bikhora (First), which was purchased in 1935 in Bari, Italy, by a Russian Jew named Frankel and brought to the Land of Israel by the Italians who would later work on board. In those days’ terms, it was large and elaborate: 18 meters long with an eighty-horsepower motor. But Frankel had trouble running it: it was impossible to find the right spare parts in Palestine, there was a lack of

brew], 25 March 1937, IV-250-27-2-319, LI, Tel Aviv. For more on the conflict between right and left on the Yishuv regarding the development of the maritime field in the second half of the thirties, see below in this chapter.  Bar-Kochba Meirovitz, “Problems with Fishing in the Land of Israel,” conference of kibbutz companies and HaNoar HaOved groups [in Hebrew], Tsror Mikhtavim 60 (125), 11 July 1939, 12.  Loya, “Fisheries Industry,” 19.  This deepwater fishing method first came to Palestine in 1923 with fishermen from Malta, as noted in the second chapter.  Wydra, Fishing, 25 – 28; the Italian fishing boats were outfitted with strong motors, and the plentiful fish they caught was sold in Palestine’s markets at high prices. Thus, for example, it was reported that in 1937 the Italian fishermen took over the fishing market in Palestine. They worked on ten boats, and in the first nine months they took in 574 tons of fish, constituting some 42 percent of the fish on the land’s shores at the time. See Bar-Kochba Meirovitz (most likely) [in Hebrew], September 1937, S11/14/B, CZA, Jerusalem.

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nets and threads, and with no shipyard in Palestine it had to sail to Beirut for repairs.²⁰⁹ In March 1937, the Maritime Department leased the boat from Frankel, and ten members of HaKibbutz HaMeuhad’s Plugat HaYam and HaNoar HaOved’s sea company—later Sdot Yam—were first trained on board. For a number of months, the youth worked on the boat, but this attempt also failed because of a lack of working capital and experienced fishermen; the rickety state of the boat also meant that it could be used for no more than a few months.²¹⁰ It was for this reason that in July of that year the Jewish Agency’s Maritime Department purchased an additional Italian trawler named the Josephina, which became the Snapir (Fin) in Hebrew.²¹¹ The Snapir was one of the first purchases made by the Histadrut’s Nahshon. It was a small five-person Italian boat, leased at first by Nahshon to members of Plugat HaYam.²¹² A dispute emerged between the Maritime Department and Plugat HaYam: the Maritime Department demanded that work on the ship be salaried, but the company claimed that they should be viewed as an independent farm, like the land-based working settlements— rather than leasing the equipment, it should be in the company’s full ownership from the very beginning. In the end, Plugat HaYam’s demand was accepted and the boat was transferred fully to its responsibility. The Snapir thus became the first collectively owned ship working in the sector, owned entirely by the fishermen.²¹³ The second boat purchased by Nahshon was Peled (Steel), which was leased to the members of HaNoar HaOved’s sea group, who had also worked on board the Snapir along with members of Plugat HaYam. This occurred after two years of

 Our Writer in Haifa, “Jewish Sea Enterprises in Haifa and the Galilee” [in Hebrew], Haaretz, January 16, 1938, 3; A. C., “Road from the Port,” in Hanoch, Fishing Settlements, 67.  In 1942, the Bikhora was sold to Captain Pich, but ultimately the company that he established went bankrupt and the Bikhora story came to an end; D. Shmida, “Ships’ Tales” [in Hebrew], Alon ha-Dayagim b, no. 18 (1958): 22, citing a senior fisherman from Sdot Yam about the challenges and lack of knowledge accompanying its operation. From: Meir, Field and Sea, 10.  B.-K. Meirovitz, Haifa, to N. Wydra [in Hebrew], 25 June 1937, S53/1339/1, CZA, Jerusalem; B.K. Meirovitz, Tel Aviv, to E. Kaplan [in Hebrew], 5 July 1937, S9/285, CZA, Jerusalem; Porat, Fishery Pioneers, 63 – 67.  Tsror Mikhtavim 28 (93) [in Hebrew], 21 June 1937; Wydra, Fishing, 27. Josephina was built in Italy in 1935 and had a thirty-five-horsepower motor and sails. It was bought by Nahshon for 750 Palestine pounds and leased to HaKibbutz HaMeuhad. Tsur, Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 1:198.  This was only after the Italian owner’s conditions for the sale of the boat were fulfilled; they included an employment contract for a year under his guidance and 20 percent of production. See B.-K. Meirovitz, Tel Aviv, to E. Kaplan [in Hebrew], 20 May 1937, S53/1339/1, CZA, Jerusalem; A. C., “Road from the Port,” in Hanoch, Fishing Settlements, 67.

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training, when the members of the group requested their own vessel. Peled was bought in Holland and arrived in the Land of Israel on October 31, 1938. The group worked on it for a while, but with time it, too, began to show faults, and in 1941 it was seized by the British.²¹⁴ Nahshon also bought a third ship, Rahaf (Float), meant to serve for training and practice, but its days were numbered: in a storm in December 1938 on the southern shores of Cyprus, it shattered on the reef.²¹⁵ A fishery summary conducted by the Maritime Department about trawling boats specifically shows that the yield was meager. In 1938, it reached 31.5 tons, 22 tons of which were from the two trawlers, Snapir and Peled, and 9.5 from fishermen in the Kinneret and Hula Lakes; it constituted 2.5 percent of the overall fishery in Palestine.²¹⁶ Moreover, the youth working on the Maritime Department’s trawlers confronted backbreaking working conditions, limited experience, mishaps operating the equipment, and competition with Italian and Arab fishermen. As such, harsh criticism was voiced—primarily from the right side of the Yishuv’s political map—about the inadequate conduct and lack of professionalism of the administration of the Jewish Agency’s Maritime Department, the PML, and Nahshon. It was claimed that those in the administration lacked the necessary skills to manage and lead matters of the sea and fishery, that they had been selected for their positions only due to party contacts. Therefore, it was asserted, the purchase of the Snapir and Peled had been unprofessional. It soon emerged that the ships were not suitable for the job they had been given, and thus their operation did not increase the amount of fish caught by Jews in the land. According to those same critics, the institutions needed to consult with the few Jewish Mediterranean deepwater fishing experts, namely

 Porat, Fishery Pioneers, 72– 73; Tsur, Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 1:262– 263, 2:130.  Our Writer in Haifa, “Jewish Sea Enterprises in Haifa and the Galilee” [in Hebrew], Haaretz, January 16, 1938, 3; Herman, Conquering a Route, 65 – 66. Rahaf had a capacity of 170 tons and was equipped with a 120-horsepower motor. It transported primarily cement from the factory in Chica near Tripoli to the shores of Egypt, Syria, Cyprus, and Greece and to Haifa. Nine Jewish sailors worked on board at the beginning, under Captain Gidon Rosenthal. The ship, as noted, sank on December 28, 1938, and three of its crew were killed: Gershon Erlich, Gidon Rosenthal, and a Turkish mechanic whose name I could not ascertain. The ship worked under Nahshon for a year and a half, and a number of sea workers from the sea companies were first trained there. See Bar-Kochba Meirovitz (most likely), September 1937, S11/14/‫ב‬, CZA, Jerusalem. Erlich and Rosenthal were Sdot Yam pioneers, and their death was very difficult for the group. See “Rahaf (on the Thirtieth Day)” [in Hebrew], Alon Kevutzat Sdot Yam, 56, January 27, 1939; eulogy from David Remez with the erection of gravestones a year later, see Yam 16 [in Hebrew], September–December 1939, 1.  B.-K. Meirovitz, “Jewish Fishery,” in Hanoch, Fishing Settlements.

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the fishing graduates from the naval academy founded by Betar in Italy (which will be discussed later in this chapter)—but the Jewish Agency had not given them immigration visas, it was claimed, because they belonged to Betar.²¹⁷ Regardless of who was responsible for the lack of success in trawling at the time, these were, undoubtedly, pioneering acts in the field of Jewish fishery on Palestine’s coast. They drew the residents to the land’s shores, where the members of different companies accumulated initial trawling experience. With time, the residents’ willingness to work in sea professions grew and this abetted, to one degree or another, the change that took place in the institutions’ approach to establishing fishing farms as a ballast for Jewish fishery and founding permanent settlements along the coasts.

The Establishment of the First Fishing Settlements An additional step taken by the Maritime Department for the development of the fisheries industry was the push to found fishing villages and permanent settlements along the Mediterranean coast and the lakes—Lake Kinneret and the Hula Lake. Ben-Gurion expressed the insight that crystallized about these villages’ importance well: There is no hold on the sea without the coastal land. Just as there is no hold on the air and flight without a foothold on the ground, without a station for airplanes…every dunam of coastal land is an entire world, an outlet to the source of blessing and salvation and might—an outlet to the sea, and incomparable to the hundreds and thousands of dunams inside the land. A fishing village on the seashore—is an ultimate step in our settlement. It will connect the two parts of the homeland: the land and the sea. (Emphasis in original.)²¹⁸

In light of past failures, the Maritime Department promoted the idea of a mixed sea farm, where fishing was combined with other land-based agricultural sectors. The development of the fishery sector in the Mediterranean Sea and the internal lakes was driven by the trend of kibbutz fishing settlements, whose farms would be mixed and versatile; the fishery sector dovetailed with them organically.²¹⁹ There was a need to overpower a number of the settling bodies at the time, who claimed that agricultural fields close to the seashore, covered in sand and unfit for agricultural work, constituted an impossible synthesis.²²⁰ Binyamin    

Helpern, Revival, 300 – 302. Ben-Gurion, In the Battle, 3:194. Tsur, Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 1:262. Weitz, Settlement Activities, 119.

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(Benny) Maharshek, from Kibbutz Givat HaShlosha, defined the necessary foundations for the new settlements in the following way: “We said: The oar and the plough are intertwined and tied one to another. Thus our goal is to establish villages of fishermen. On the sea shore, near the sea, we will build their settlements.”²²¹ Meanwhile, it was also claimed that these settlements should be large relative to the others, as fishery required that a group of fishermen be at sea for a long time, away from their group and their farm environment. The establishment of large fishing farms, with hundreds of families, and with the fisheries sector as only one element in the agriculture, would make it easier both for the group of fishermen, partners in a large economic enterprise, and the other members of the farm, who could compensate for the fishermen, often away from the group for long periods of time, in the general economic plan.²²² Due to the objective difficulties, it was claimed, fishing settlements would need an initial investment on a large scale—especially in comparison with the investment in land-based agricultural settlements—and the settling institutions should view themselves as the primary factor in developing this type of settlement, which was more life-threatening and carried greater stress.²²³ Two fishing settlements were founded on the land’s shores by the year 1939, and they became permanent ones: in Atlit, a Maapilim group established the Neve Yam group, and on the coast of Acre HaKibbutz HaMeuhad’s Plugat HaYam established Mishmar HaYam. Additional efforts were made in those years to establish fishing settlements; these came to fruition only later or failed entirely, with the groups disbanding. The Maapilim group came together late in 1934 in the Polish city of Gdynia on the shores of the Baltic Sea, where fishing, sailing, and navigating courses took place under the tutelage of Captain Gustav Pich, a non-Jewish German who took part in the group’s training and even volunteered to collect funds for the purchase of fishing equipment in communities around Poland.²²⁴ In 1937, Pich was sent to the Land of Israel by the group members and, at the invitation of the Jewish Agency, surveyed locations for the fish B. Maharshek, “Conference of Kibbutz Companies and HaNoar HaOved Groups” [in Hebrew], Tsror Mikhtavim 60 (125), 11 July 1939, 2.  B. Repetur, conference of kibbutz companies and HaNoar HaOved groups [in Hebrew], Tsror Mikhtavim 60 (125), 11 July 1939, 21; for accounts of the plight of the fishermen, absent as they were from group life, see, for example, in Hulata and Ein Gev, Yerachmiel, “From Then until Today,” in Kibbutz Hulata, Five Years, 26; Wittenberg-Hermoni, Ein Gev, 133 – 34.  Tsur, “A Task and Its Realization,” in Hanoch, Fishing Settlements, 38 – 41.  In early 1937, the group in Gdynia had fifty-five members, including twenty-two women, who worked in various sea professions. In fishing, the group was aided by the Zevulun school established in the same place. See Joseph Shapira, secretary of the group in Gdynia, Gdynia, to the Jewish Agency, Aliyah Department [in Hebrew], 22 February 1937, IV-250-27-2-319, LI, Tel Aviv.

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ing village. After conducting a tour from Rosh Hanikra to Ashdod, Pich submitted a report in which he suggested three preferred sites for building a fishing village: Atlit, Caesarea, and the Abu Zabura bay (later Mikhmoret). In 1938, he immigrated to the Land of Israel along with the first members of Maapilim, accompanying them in their initial steps settling and fishing. At first, the group settled on the coast of Nahariya and, using the money raised by Pich in Poland, purchased fishing equipment and even began to build fishing boats.²²⁵ However, it quickly became apparent that the equipment and wood that the group had brought to build the boats was not suited to conditions in the Land of Israel. The group later switched to local fishing methods under the tutelage of Arab instructors. It also became clear that in order to guarantee their continued activities, they must attain a permanent settlement rather than basing themselves solely on fishery. Pich recommended the Atlit shore, which he felt had the necessary conditions for developing permanent settlement and shore fishing. On May 17, 1939, the group settled on a hillock south of Atlit, establishing Neve Yam on land that the Jewish Agency leased from PICA.²²⁶ HaKibbutz HaMeuhad’s Plugat HaYam was founded in 1935 and settled in the Zebulun Valley, on the outskirts of Acre. In its infancy, the company viewed its role primarily as conquering work at the Haifa port, and most of its members worked in various port jobs, as noted above. From the early days, the group’s members worked under the guidance of Arab fishermen in shoreside fishing; they were also trained in light fishing by Yugoslavian fishermen. In 1937, they began, as noted, to work in trawling using the Bikhora and later the Snapir. ²²⁷ It was the difficult working conditions that illustrated more than anything that the precondition necessary for the group’s success was permanent settlement on the coast, where it would be possible to open an agricultural farm as well. Plugat HaYam had allotted to it the sand strip west of the railroad from Acre

 B.-K. Meirovitz to the Gordonia-Maapilim group, Haifa [in Hebrew], 17 April 1938, S53/1339/ 2, CZA, Jerusalem; Ephraim, “The Fishing Affair in the Maapilim Group,” in Hanoch, Fishing Settlements. Captain Pich was a prominent agent in putting fishery on the map of Zionist understakings in the thirties. In 1938, at the initiative of the Maritime Department, he conducted a professional tour in which he surveyed the entire coast of Palestine including Eilat, sailed aboard different fishing boats, met with fishermen, and, with the end of the inspection, submitted a detailed report on the current conditions and suggestions for improvement to the Jewish Agency’s Maritime Department. For more on Captain Pich, see Porat, Fishery Pioneers, 54– 55; Yarkoni, The Sea, 208.  Porat, Fishery Pioneers, 58 – 63. PICA (Palestine Jewish Colonization Association) was a company founded by Baron Edmond James de Rothschild in 1924, renewing his involvement in Jewish settlement in Palestine, which had begun in the days of the First Aliyah.  Porat, Fishery Pioneers, 63 – 67.

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to the boroughs of Haifa (or krayot); it was established on May 22, 1939, five days after Neve Yam, and its name became Mishmar HaYam.²²⁸ The entry of Plugat HaYam to fishery work in the Mediterranean Sea was a crucial event, because the Jewish Agency began to shape its understanding of the importance of developing the fishing sector alongside settlement agriculture. Neve Yam and Mishmar HaYam were the first two maritime kibbutzim on the shores of the Mediterranean; they became fixed settlements before the outbreak of the Second World War. Their establishment, in mid-1939, was combined with the Stockade and Tower (Homa u-Migdal) settlements at the time, and they were intended, among other things, to fill a role in disembarking passengers from the immigration ships and smuggling weapons for the Haganah by sea.²²⁹ On Lake Kinneret, the struggle of Jewish fishermen over fishing work resurfaced, and in 1937, two first kibbutzim were founded within the Stockade and Tower settlements, Ein Gev and Ginosar.²³⁰ For the fishermen from the two kibbutzim, the early days were similar to those of the fishermen on Lake Kinneret in earlier years. The kibbutz fishermen also had no previous experience in fishing, and they also did not know the nature and fish of the lake. Most were young and newly immigrated, people still adjusting to a new land, and they were also confronted early on by opposition from the Arab fishermen, by the uncompromising hold Goldzweig and Houri had on the lake, and by British legislation, which the kibbutz fishermen at the time viewed as limiting Jewish activity. However, despite all of the difficulties, the fishermen in Ein Gev and Ginosar were unwilling to relinquish their rights to fish in the Kinneret generally and the Batiha specifically. Moreover, this time the fishermen were not alone in the campaign; they stood alongside kibbutz members, an agricultural community that was united and a partner in the conquest of the Kinneret. The kibbutzim took upon themselves the task out of an understanding that their settlement on the shores of

 “Plugat HaYam in the Zevulun Valley” [in Hebrew], Haaretz, June 30, 1940, 3; Porat, Fishery Pioneers, 69 – 70. Settling there was very difficult; it was accompanied by sandstorms and the soil was saline, as was the groundwater. The change in name (to mishmar, meaning guard) hints at the political context at the time; five days before the establishment, on May 17, 1939, the White Paper was published. For more on the HaKibbutz HaMeuhad’s unique contribution to the establishment of fishing settlements in the Mandate period, see Tsur, “Sea Conquest,” 148 – 51.  Avigur et al., Hagana, 3:1:31; Oren, Settlement, 68, 88.  Kibbutz Ginosar was founded seven kilometers north of Tiberias. The establishment of Ein Gev as an isolated settlement on the eastern shore of Lake Kinneret was considered a bold pioneering act, and garnered acclaim in the Yishuv. The founders were members of the Betelem group, from Germany, Austria, and Eastern Europe. See Gvati, Century of Settlement, 300; Eliav, Jewish National Home, 379 – 80; Barkay and Schiller, Kinneret, 135 – 36, 200, 203.

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Lake Kinneret, their security, and their financial future would demand a combination of conquest of land with conquest of the lake and fishery. The involvement of the Jewish Agency’s Maritime Department in the establishment of the kibbutzim on the shores of Lake Kinneret at that time and their solidification was critical. The fishery struggles on the Kinneret thus changed from a local struggle to part of the evolving national conflict, and the Maritime Department took care of it “from above.” The department, striving to learn from past mistakes, worked in a planned and organized fashion, with many more means allotted to it than had been in the past. The department’s assistance came in the form of equipment, training, funding of efforts, and the promise of a baseline compensation per workday while the sector could not support itself.²³¹ Ein Gev initially had four rowboats; in the summer of 1938, Ein Gev’s fishermen received training in modern fishing techniques by instructors from the Jewish Agency’s Maritime Department. Work progressed, though initially there were no profits. They began to work in the southern part of Lake Kinneret, but its northwestern area, the Batiha, was taken by the Arab fishermen.²³² In early 1939 the fishermen received motorboats from the Maritime Department.²³³ Initally the fishermen faced many obstacles, their yield was minimal, their income for a day’s work was meager, and their security situation was not good, especially on the eastern shores of the Kinneret.²³⁴ One of the fishermen wrote at the time: “We felt great strangeness when first approaching the boat and its heavy oars and the net. A new world indeed! We had to overcome nature’s conditions, the reception by the Arabs, and ourselves.”²³⁵ In December 1939, the people began to build a pier on their own, in an effort to establish an anchorage pond for the fishing boats. The Maritime Department was involved in addressing the difficulties; in order to help the fishermen in weak seasons the department asked the electric company to allow Lake Kinneret fishermen, especially those from Ein Gev, to

 B.-K. Meirovitz, “The Fishing Problem in Palestine” [in Hebrew], Yam 3, 1939, 1; Wydra, Fishing, 23; Gelbart, Jews and Seafaring, 72.  Y. P., “In Fishing Settlements—Ein Gev” [in Hebrew], Yam, December 1945, 14– 15.  Wydra, Fishing, 35.  “First Assembly of Fishermen from the Kibbutz Companies and HaNoar HaOved Groups” [in Hebrew], Yediot Kibbutz Betelem Kinneret Ein Gev 83 (12 May 1939): 4– 6. It was not easy for the kibbutz fishermen; fishing on Lake Kinneret forced them to be away from the settlement for many days, seasonal work demanded toil for some twenty hours a day, fishing was dependent on the weather, currents, and winds, and the fishermen at times returned emptyhanded. The family makeup and the social lives of the fishermen were also affected by their hours of absence and isolation from the place. See N. Wydra, “Fishing Methods,” in Hanoch, Fishing Settlements, 28 – 29; for more on their first year and its difficulties, see Ein Gev, Ein Gev, 1– 17, 36 – 42.  Hanoch, Fishing Settlements, 63.

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fish in the company’s ponds in Naharayim. The company agreed, and in October and November of 1939, the fishermen worked in the Naharayim ponds, which were rich in fish. The Maritime Department even helped Kibbutz Ginosar dig a large fish-breeding pond, ten dunams in size, on its land.²³⁶ Furthermore, the kibbutz fishermen developed light fishing, using portable kerosene lamps, thus solving the problem of the small number of fish in the summer; they could fish in the lake throughout the year. The Arab fishermen voiced their displeasure at the Jews’ appropriation of fishery. In response, it appears, the Mandate government released a special order that forbade light fishing, reasoning that it would change the power structure between the fishermen to the Jews’ advantage, thus contravening the spirit of the 1939 White Paper.²³⁷ The order gave the High Commissioner or his representative full authority to limit the number of fishermen on Lake Kinneret, the fishing areas, and the use of various fishing techniques, as well as setting other conditions as they saw fit.²³⁸ Bar-Kochba Meirovitz, director of the Maritime Department, expressed his displeasure with the ordinance’s publication, which was meant to preserve the status quo of the twenties. He claimed that the decline in the yield of fish on the Kinneret was not necessarily caused by the renewed Jewish fishing; rather, it stemmed from three other causes. First, Meirovitz felt that the reduction in fish was due to the natural reproduction of the fish being disturbed, in his opinion first and foremost by the fishing conducted by Houri and his partners, which focused primarily on the shores. The fish were trapped when nearing the shores of the Jordan estuaries in order to lay eggs. In his opinion, killing the fish before they laid eggs—in particular, the killing of tens of thousands of small fish in the Jordan estuaries on the part of those who ruled the Batiha—prevented the natural development of the fish, and as a result the number of fish in the lake declined.

 N. Wydra to E. Kaplan, member of the Jewish Agency Executive, Haifa [in Hebrew], 3 October 1939, S53/1341, CZA, Jerusalem; N. Wydra to B.-K. Meirovitz, “Tokhnit le-Hagdalat ha-Dayig beErets Yiśrael be-Matsav ha-Milḥama ha-Nokhaḥi,” Haifa, 4 August 1940, S9/1571, CZA, Jerusalem.  “Amendment no. 1 to the 1937 Fishing Ordinance” [in Hebrew], ha-Iton ha-Rishmi, August 10, 1939; B.-K. Meirovitz to Y. Gruenbaum, Jerusalem [in Hebrew], 3 July 1940, S25/7429, CZA, Jerusalem; N. Wydra, “Doḥ Merukaz al Peilut Maḥleḳet ha-Yam be-Ḥodashim October 1939 – April 1940,” Haifa, 1940, S53/594, CZA, Jerusalem.  “Amendment no. 1 to the 1937 Fishing Ordinance” [in Hebrew], ha-Iton ha-Rishmi, August 10, 1939; B.-K. Meirovitz, Tel Aviv, to B. Joseph, Tel Aviv [in Hebrew], 27 March 1939, S9/1579, CZA, Jerusalem; N. Wydra, Haifa, to B.-K. Meirovitz [in Hebrew], 13 September 1939, S25/7429, CZA, Jerusalem.

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Second, Meirovitz claimed that the fishing being conducted used methods that harmed the fish’s development—noise, explosives, and poison. These methods, even if they were permissible, made it possible to catch those fish that had not yet grown sufficiently and had not reached egg-laying age. Finally, Meirovitz noted that the government had avoided introducing new types of fish, a step that Meirovitz claimed most European governments took in their large lakes. These governments kept egg-laying fish in small ponds next to the shores of the lakes, giving them good egg-laying conditions in the ponds and thus introducing millions of small fish each year to the lakes for the sake of fattening. Meirovitz noted that the Maritime Department he headed had introduced some ten thousand young trout (carp) to the Hula Lake that year in order to develop fishing there, and the government should take constructive steps to do the same in Lake Kinneret. The ordinance that the government released, however, made it clear to Meirovitz that it wished to preserve the status quo on Lake Kinneret and regulate fishing through restrictions rather than development. He claimed that the restrictions were unjustified professionally and would cause harm primarily to the Jewish fishermen, who were the only ones keeping the law at that point.²³⁹ Wydra, head of the Maritime Department in Haifa, felt that Houri had been involved in the new ordinance. In his opinion, Houri had claimed in a meeting with the head of the Department of Agriculture that the Jews had no real interest in fishing on the Kinneret and that their desire to develop it stemmed from political considerations. He also cast doubt on the Jews’ skills to manage fish farms on their own. Wydra felt that Houri’s words had had a great effect on the British, with the ordinance published shortly thereafter.²⁴⁰ Despite the growing tension due to the increased Jewish fishing activity on the lake, the end of rioting actually saw a case of cooperation between the kibbutz and Arab fishermen on Lake Kinneret—ostensibly symbolizing the beginning of the decline of the Houri-Goldzweig monopoly on fishing in the Batiha. In late January 1940, a delegation of Arabs from the Batiha came to Kibbutz Ein Gev and offered the fishermen joint fishing in the part of the Batiha that was under the control of the British Mandate. During the rioting, Houri had been forced to transfer his business temporarily to the locals, who did not wish to give up the profits. Forty Syrian fishermen signed a letter in which they offered the Ein Gev fishermen a partnership under the same conditions they had had for their work with Houri.

 N. Wydra, Haifa, to B.-K. Meirovitz [in Hebrew], 18 March 1940, S9/1579, CZA, Jerusalem.  N. Wydra to B. K. Meirovitz, Haifa [in Hebrew], 14 April 1940, S53/1339, CZA, Jerusalem.

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Fig. 7: Members of Kibbutz Ein Gev hanging their nets on the protective fence of the kibbutz, May 1, 1938. Photographer: Zoltan Kluger (The National Photo Collection, D827-087)

As expected, this incurred a serious response from the partners, who were concerned that an agreement between Jewish and Arab fishermen would harm

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their interests on Lake Kinneret.²⁴¹ Houri and Goldzweig managed to get three hundred families of Arab fishermen from the Syrian Batiha and the surroundings to sign a petition that was submitted to the British government, in which it was claimed that the entry of Jews to fishery was depriving them of their income and dispossessing them from the work that had sustained them for many generations. A telegram was similarly sent about the petition to the Syrian authorities, with the eastern shore of the Batiha only dozens of meters from their border. According to information that reached the Maritime Department, the British authorities were influenced by these steps, and the government offices renewed the discussion about publicizing the ordinance restricting fishing on the Kinneret.²⁴² Nonetheless, on the eve of the Second World War, the balance of power in fishing on the Kinneret was shifting to the advantage of the Yishuv, and the Houri-Goldzweig partnership was beginning to lose steam for other reasons: Shlomo Goldzweig, the “King of the Kinneret,” left his business due to his age and transferred his fish store to his son. Mino Goldzweig was different from his father; he was a Haganah member and close with the Yishuv leaders, and when the fishing groups were established, he offered them aid.²⁴³ The Hula Valley extends to the north of Lake Kinneret, in the northern area of the Jordan Valley and south of the Jordan tributaries. It was here that, in the second half of the thirties, one of the first attempts to establish a fishing settlement took place. The lake was created as a result of lava emitted from volcanos in the Golan, which flowed into the Hula Valley and created a saddle of hills between the Golan and Safed. Floods in the Jordan led to the flooding of the territory north of the hills, and with the great erosion from the hills around, which flattened the area, land that was ripe for the development of rich and diverse flora was born. The lake that was created took on features akin to a swamp: shallow water, rich vegetation, and marsh-like soil. The Hula swamps were rich in various aquatic plants (like, for example, Cyperus papyrus). The swamp plants that rotted in the depths of the soil created a layer of peat that spread over an expansive area and contained an abundance of fish.²⁴⁴ Prior to the Ottoman

 N. Wydra to B.-K. Meirovitz, “She’eilat ha-Dayig be-Batiḥa,” Haifa, 12 February 1940, S25/ 7428, CZA, Jerusalem. Houri had made many enemies in his business and with his tough approach to the Arab fishermen on the Kinneret. Anton Habaz was accidentally killed in an attempted attempt on Houri’s life at the door to his home. See Reports from the Arab-Eastern Galilee field, 1 March 1944, 105/96, HHA, Tel Aviv.  B.-K. Meirovitz, Jerusalem, to Dr. B. Joseph (most probably in Jerusalem) [in Hebrew], 20 March 1940, S9/1579, CZA, Jerusalem.  Nun, Sea of Kinneret, 242.  On the Hula Valley and the formation of the swamps, see Karmon, Hula, 3 – 16.

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era, the Turkish noted that the swamp needed to be drained and gave the permit to two Syrian families—Salim Bek Salam and Omer Behum, owners of the SyrianOttoman Company for Agriculture, in 1914. At the end of the First World War, after the land had been conquered by the British and the borderline between Palestine and Syria delineated, the Hula Valley, until Metula, was added to the British Mandate territory. In 1934, Yehoshua Hankin, the representative of the Palestine Land Development Company, signed a contract between the Arab permit holders—who for twenty years had done nothing to drain the swamp—and the PLDC and Jewish Agency for the permit to drain the Hula territory (some 41,000 dunams).²⁴⁵ The Jewish fishery pioneers on the lake were a group of youth from HaNoar HaOved, immigrant camps, and the German Youth Society, who arrived at Yesod HaMa’ala on September 11, 1936 and established a labor unit.²⁴⁶ The group members adopted the name Hulata, which contained the name of the lake, and as a first step leased a plot of land south of the settlement from the Yesod HaMa’ala settlement committee, establishing an auxiliary farm.²⁴⁷ The relatively small area of the lake, roughly fourteen thousand dunams, allowed the fishermen to return home at the end of the day; they did not need to be away from home for days on end, as had happened often to those on Lake Kinneret.²⁴⁸ The 1937 royal commission’s recommendations, which illuminated the political significance of the Jewish land and settlement distribution in determining the borders of a future country, hastened the settling institutions’ activity in the area. The director of the Hula permit, a Kfar Giladi member named Nahum Horovitz, appealed to the Hulata members, proposing that they begin fishing in the lake.²⁴⁹ They responded to his suggestion that they move to live near

 Harozen, Land of Jordan, 160 – 76; Shalem, Hula Valley, 2:127– 30; Avi-Yonah, “Hula Valley,” in Karmon, Hula. On the efforts made by the Zionist Organization to get the permit to drain the Hula swamp in the years leading up to the First World War see Harozen, Land of Jordan, 111– 36.  On the early days of Yesod HaMa’ala and the many difficulties with its establishment, see Harozen, Land of Jordan, 25 – 29.  Porat, Fishery Pioneers, 85. Hulata was named for the Aramaic form of the name Hula, as mentioned in the Talmud. It is the land’s smallest lake, also known as Mei Marom and Yam Somkhi. The name Yama de-Ḥulata is mentioned once in the Jerusalem Talmud (Kil’ayim 9:3), and in the Babylonian Talmud the versions Yama shel Ḥeilat and Yama shel Ḥilata are both mentioned (Bava Batra 74b). Similarly, the Hulata region is mentioned as one of the rivers that Augustus gave to Herod (Ant. 15.1). It is assumed that the source of the name is in the word Ḥilat, apparently a kind of cane plant, reed, or papyrus; Braslavi, Do You Know, 108 – 9.  Wydra, “Fishing Methods,” in Hanoch, Fishing Settlements, 27– 29.  For Horovitz’s report, see Teichmann-Levin, Fisherman, 25 – 27. At the time, the Hula Lake was considered to have a higher yield than Lake Kinneret, thirteen times the size of the Hula

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the franchise, on the shores of the lake, and lived in one of his buildings and in temporary shelters. Moreover, they also leased some four hundred dunams divided into plots from Talil, the nearby Arab village, in order to combine fishing with agriculture. Horovitz’s initiative to introduce Jewish fishermen to the Hula Lake, with the encouragement of the Maritime Department, was met at first by reservation on the part of the Palestine Land Development Company, which was concerned that their entry into the lake would lead to opposition on the part of the Arabs and to a violent conflict. Ultimately the PLDC agreed that the Hulata members could fish there.²⁵⁰ The Hulata settlers began to work in fishing on the lake, first under the guidance of a German instructor named Katz, sent by the Maritime Department for a month or two, and later with a veteran Jewish fisherman from Tiberias, who worked with them for a few more months. These early attempts yielded a small number of fish, but they also confirmed that there was a future for fishing there.²⁵¹ From the beginning of Jewish fishing on the lake, the Arabs responded with a series of repeated attacks along the eastern shores. The conquest of fishery led to injuries and fatalities, but this difficult reality was occasionally recounted in the sources from the time as something that bolstered the Jewish fishermen, serving to unite them to stand up and fight for their rights.²⁵² The Arab fishermen were primarily the leaseholders of the Ottoman-Syrian Company, and had been on the shores when the permit was transferred; they numbered some thirty fam-

Lake but with a much smaller yield relative to its size. Wydra, “Fishing Methods,” in Hanoch, Fishing Settlements, 27– 29.  Palestine Land Development Company, Jerusalem, to M. Sharett, Jerusalem [in Hebrew], 5 December 1937, S53/1339/2, CZA, Jerusalem. The Jewish Agency’s Executive directed the PLDC to act in the area, with the intention of blurring the pronounced national character of the enterprise. The company, against the wishes of the Maritime Department, opposed Jewish fishing at the lake, claiming that bringing in Jews during the violence would engender a severe response on the part of the Arabs and cause unwanted clashes. In the disagreement between the PLDC and the Maritime Department about Jewish fishing on the lake, the company claimed that the permit in its hands was temporary, and would be transferred to other institutions, and that the company did not need to take responsibility for the state of Hulata but rather for the income or losses of the permit itself, which was leased for pay to Hulata for a limited amount of time. For more, see Porat, Fishery Pioneers, 85 – 87; Loya, “Fisheries Industry,” 29 – 40.  Loya, “Fisheries Industry,” 30. On February 10, 1938, the first group of three members departed for work on the Hula with an instructor. Histadrut, HaKibbutz HaMeuhad, Hulata-HaNoar HaOved Pamphlet, Three Years In, 1937 – 1939 [in Hebrew], 8, quote from Hulata pamphlet, May 1939.  For example, see Latuvitsky, “Five Years,” in Kibbutz Hulata, Five Years; Tzvi Latuvitsky, “Hulata at Age Ten” [in Hebrew], Yam, October–November 1946, 18 – 19.

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ilies.²⁵³ One of the peaks in the assaults on Hulata fishermen was an attack on July 20, 1938 in which three members were killed and six injured.²⁵⁴ But alongside the attacks, and precisely then, with the atmosphere of violence in the country, the Arab leadership in the Safed area decided to conduct a strike at the Hula, and the Arab fishermen’s boats began to disappear from the lake. The Hula’s Jewish fishermen remained alone, and took the opportunity to firmly establish their hold on fishery at the place; the group reached full control over the lake in mid1939.²⁵⁵ Fishery became a real economic factor, and the hopes of the settlers at the place hung on its development.²⁵⁶ Hulata’s residents’ efforts, foremost the fishery in the Hula Lake, was described in various sources as pioneering work of great difficulty, suited only to special types of people. As one of the first fishermen attested: In fishing there was team pride. It was the first industry that brought in money. Our existence was dependent on fishing. If you brought fish, there was money tomorrow…. It was common knowledge that the “cream of the kibbutz” worked in fishery…. And it was obvious that the fisherman drinks…drinking was an expression of being a member of a closed group. There were no “extra privileges” in kibbutz society, except for one thing: at breakfast, the fisherman received fried fish—because he worked in more difficult conditions than the others. That was the custom.²⁵⁷

This was the backdrop upon which the conditions of the place and time were described: the kibbutz members lived at first in a place without permanent buildings, with no agricultural foundations, and without an anchorage for boats; it was backbreaking work on cold and rainy winter nights, requiring many hours of standing in the water, drying and repairing nets, preparing boats, and withstanding plagues of mosquito-borne malaria, isolation, and detachment from so-

 Teichmann-Levin, Fisherman, 29 – 30. At the time, a number of fishermen who had fished for the Houri-Goldzweig partnership were some of the group of Arab fishermen. Some time later, a compromise was reached about the fishing rights between the Hula fishermen and Mino Goldzweig. For more on that, see Teichmann-Levin, Fisherman, 55 – 57.  Teichmann-Levin, Fisherman, 23 – 24; Tzvi Latuvitsky, “Nine Years of Hulata” [in Hebrew], Yam, September 1945, 8.  Tsur, Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 1:263.  On the fishing methods of the Arab fishermen on the Hula Lake and the methods developed by the new settlers, see, “Fishing Methods on the Hula Lake” [in Hebrew], unsigned, undated, 1, Hulata Archive, Hulata.  Teichmann-Levin, Fisherman, 34– 35.

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ciety. All of this made settlement at the place particularly heroic, and engendered a sense of pride.²⁵⁸ Men and women worked in fishery, and one expressed the feeling of the fisherwomen well: “The work is full of interest. If you grow accustomed to moving the oars in the right way—you master it with no difficulty. The labor demands engaging the muscles and develops them. And the sea—the Hula Sea, though it is small—has space, and you glide on it easily with your boat, you conquer it. The sea is very pretty, but it is customary for us not to be ‘impressed’ by nature, because that is a ‘neophyte trait.’”²⁵⁹ In the first stages of fishing in Hulata, the Maritime Department covered minimum wage for workdays. At the end of 1939, the department decided to reduce its financial support of fishing development in Hulata, and instead of 250 Palestine pounds, gave only 150 Palestine pounds, which was needed to top off equipment as well as for fishing attempts, training, and the like. From 1941, fishery at Hulata was independent, and received no budget from the Maritime Department.²⁶⁰ The idea of fishing settlements, which began to come to life in the second half of the thirties, took root for two primary reasons: first, the Jewish Agency’s Maritime Department’s financial investment in boats and equipment and the guidance it gave in training, instruction, and attempts at fishery; second, the emphasis placed on the merging of agriculture and fishery against the backdrop of the failure of the various fishery groups that had been active since the twenties and in the first half of the thirties.²⁶¹ An additional, and important, expression of the rise of the Jewish fishery industry in the second half of the thirties and the recognition of its significance

 Kibbutz Hulata, Five Years, 60; Braslavi, Do You Know, 149. Shlomo Kostika, in a poem he wrote in his journal at the time, expressed the difficult reality at the lake alongside the determination to conquer it: “Three comrades have we sacrificed/but we still do not surrender. This sea is ours/though around it the enemy storms…. Hebrew fishermen are we/marching toward conquest. This day the sea we conquered/and tomorrow we will conquer the Hula”; Kostika, Diary, 48. For an account of one of the fisherwomen of Hulata—one of the only women to take part in the industry—about the attitude toward her as a fisherwoman and the objective difficulties that the Hulata fishermen encountered, see Cohen, Lake, 61– 72.  General Organization of Workers, Kibbutz, 262.  Wydra to Kaplan, Survey on the state of fishing, Haifa [in Hebrew], 3 October 1939, S53/1341, CZA, Jerusalem; B.-K. Meirovitz to Gruenbaum, Proposed budget for maritime and fishery work for the year 5705 (1944/1945) [in Hebrew], 13 September 1944, S53/1338, CZA, Jerusalem.  B.-K. Meirovitz, “The Problems with Fishery in the Land of Israel” [in Hebrew], Assembly of the Kibbutz Sea Company and HaNoar HaOved fishermen, Tsror Mikhtavim 60 (125), 11 July 1939, 13.

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Fig. 8: A member of Kibbutz Hulata with her fishing net on the Hula Lake, March 1, 1940. Photographer: Zoltan Kluger (The National Photo Collection, D832-074)

was the establishment of the first body representing Palestine’s Jewish fishermen. The first conference of Jewish fishermen was held on May 5 – 6, 1939, in Plugat Yam; the Jewish Fishermen’s Association in Palestine was founded as a re-

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sult. Fifty fishermen participated in the conference, which constituted the vast majority of Jewish fishermen unionized within the Zionist framework at the time. All were from the five HaKibbutz HaMeuhad companies and the HaNoar HaOved groups that worked at the time in maritime occupations and fishery in the waters of the Mediterranean and the internal lakes: Plugat HaYam, Ein Gev, Hulata, Sdot Yam, and Ginosar. Representatives of the Histadrut, the Jewish Agency’s Maritime Department, Nahshon, the PML, and the Haifa Workers’ Council also participated.²⁶² The data on the development of Jewish fishery relative to general fishery in Palestine on the eve of the Second World War indicates a rise: the portion of Jewish fishery within general fishery in Palestine grew from only eight tons of fish in 1937, or 0.47 percent of the general fishery, to sixty-seven tons in 1939, constituting 3.7 percent of the overall fishery. The data regarding the development of Jewish fishery of all kinds in tons shows that in 1937 the vast majority of Jewish fishery was deepwater fishery, while in the subsequent year the proportion of lake fishing grew greatly, reaching one third of the fish caught.²⁶³ In 1939, for the first time, the new sector of fish-breeding in ponds (pisciculture) was registered, and a mere eight hundred kilograms of fish was yielded, constituting only 1 percent of Jewish fishery at the time. But during the war and the years that followed it, the sector would become the greatest generator of change on the road to increasing production and developing Jewish fishery, as we will see in more detail in the next chapter.

Growing Activity in Sports Associations One prominent expression of the growing maritime awareness from the second half of the thirties was the expansion of sports associations’ activity in the nautical field. The establishment of the PML, as we have discussed, was an attempt by the Jewish Agency’s Maritime Department to exert its authority over the expanding sports associations, a step that was only partially successful, as we will see below.

 Assembly of fishermen from the kibbutz companies and the HaNoar HaOved groups [in Hebrew], Tsror Mikhtavim 60 (125), 11 July 1939, 1– 10. See Yehuda Rotem, interview [in Hebrew], 1 August 1994, HI, Haifa.  Tsur, Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 1:346, appendix A.

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Activity of the Maritime Divisions Maritime sport and maritime sport education continued to spread, and in late 1933 it was reported that there were six sports units: Maccabi, Hapoel, HaTzofim HaKshishim (senior scouts), Sea Scouts, Betar, and Zevulun. The maritime divisions of these organizations had more than two hundred members registered and eighteen boats, fourteen of which were sailboats; their activities included theory classes in various shipping fields as well as swimming, water games, rowing at sea and in rivers, sailing, and longer sea journeys along the coasts, including to Cyprus, to Beirut in the north, and to Port Said in the south.²⁶⁴ The largest of the sports associations’ maritime divisions in Tel Aviv in the second half of the thirties was Hapoel’s, and of 1,572 members in the association in 1938, the maritime division had 125 registered members and the swimming division had 74. This was also the division in which the number of workers at the Tel Aviv port was largest of all maritime divisions—some sixty of the Hapoel maritime division members worked at the Tel Aviv port.²⁶⁵ In Tel Aviv there was also Sea Scouts activity; of the forty members at the time, some also worked at the port in various sectors. A cabin on the shores of the Yarkon served as a Scouts club, with a few rowboats, and they worked in many educational enterprises related to the sea: swimming, rowing, working with rope, signaling at sea, sails, history of sailing, climate, oceanography, and rules of the sea. Their activity took place primarily on Saturdays and once weekly on weekdays.²⁶⁶ In Haifa, too, the Hapoel sea company was bigger than the others, and in early 1938 it had 160 members in twenty sailing and swimming groups. Ninety of the members were aged twelve to eighteen, and the rest were adults, including a group of women. The company had a number of sailboats of various types, and it was claimed that hundreds of other

 T. Nishri, “Water Sports in Tel Aviv” [in Hebrew], Yediot Iriyat Tel Aviv 3, 1933, 102. Of the six sports units it appears that despite Maccabi being the pioneer in water sports, in the years that followed it weakened in this realm. It was only in 1947 that we have a first report of the Histadrut on the subject, and there it is reported that twenty-four youth aged fifteen to seventeen and ten young adults aged twenty to twenty-two took part in the field of sport. Similarly, aside from Maccabi Tel Aviv, Maccabi did not hold water sports. See Ish-Shalom, “Maccabi,” 253.  “Tel Aviv Municipality Yearbook, 1937– 1938” [in Hebrew], Yediot Iriyat Tel Aviv, 151– 52. For memories of a number of members of Hapoel’s sea company in Tel Aviv in the twenties and early thirties, see recording of veterans for the company in Tel Aviv in Tankus, Hapoel, 21– 30.  “Training and Sport” [in Hebrew], Yam 1, January 1938, 3. On the eve of the war there were sixty members in the Zevulun Sea Scouts in Tel Aviv. See Report on the organization of Jewish Scouts in the Land of Israel and its activity from Passover 1938 until Passover 1939 [in Hebrew], 1371/04– 3926-A, TAA, Tel Aviv.

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members wished to join but the dearth of vessels prevented it.²⁶⁷ In 1937, the Histadrut purchased a sailboat in Germany that was given the name Haim Arlosoroff, which was evidently the largest sailboat on the shores of Palestine at the time.²⁶⁸ The emerging maritime activity led to the opening of two water sports divisions in two other sports associations in Tel Aviv on the eve of the Second World War: the first was an ethnic organization, belonging to the Assocation of Sephardi Jews in Tel Aviv, which established an athletic association called Degel Zion that was active in Jerusalem as well. The association did not have a declared political leaning, and the emphasis was on physical activity. It worked under the auspices of the Tel Aviv municipality, which was helmed by Israel Rokach, a leader of the General Zionists.²⁶⁹ The other association was the Religious Zionist movement’s Hapoel HaMizrachi, which established the Elitzur athletic organization. Elitzur’s goals expressed a desire to “strengthen the physical powers of the religious working youth, to prepare a camp that is unified for settlement activities, to implant the spirit of discipline and order among the religious youth, and to educate to loyalty to the enterprise of building a working religious Land of Israel.”²⁷⁰ Elitzur founded three swimming divisions, in Tel Aviv, Haifa, and Kibbutz Tirat Zvi. In 1942, a religious sea company was founded with one hundred young guardians, who served as lookouts from Nahariya until Atlit. The establishment of the company was made possible by the National Council’s appeal to the British Mandate authorities to allow the founding of a coast guard. The in-

 “Training and Sport” [in Hebrew], Yam 1, January 1938, 3. Until the Second World War, the members of Hapoel’s sea company took part in immigration activities and in activities run by the national institutions. They accompanied immigrant ships, served as crew on boats bringing the immigrants from the ships to the shore, and worked in teams helping the boats traverse the waves on their way to the shore and from it to the ships. After the Second World War, this job was primarily done by the Palyam, and the role of the sea company members was small, except for their training of the first Palyam members. See “Memories of Shmulik Tankus of the Immigration in the Thirties,” in Tankus, Hapoel, 15 – 19; Eshel, Shmuel Tankus, 27– 42.  Hayam, Ships’ Tales, 154– 57; Herman, Conquering a Route, 87. Haim Arlosoroff served not only the Hapoel trainees but also, among others, the Palyam groups, including training for the purposes of Aliyah Bet (clandestine immigration), which will be discussed later on.  The Association of Sephardi Jews in Tel Aviv was an incarnation of the Jerusalem Jewish Organization, founded in Jerusalem between 1919 and 1920 at the initiative of Dr. Yitzhak Levi and Avraham Elmaliach, prominent figures within it, with the cooperation of many Sephardic public figures and prominent rabbis from the community. Its goal was to organize the Sephardic Jews as a political force that would be represented in delegate meetings, Yishuv institutions, and the Zionist Organization Executive. See Alboher, Identification, Adaptation, and Reservation, 16 – 17, 152.  “Elitzur Religious Athletic Association,” in Kaufman and Harif, Body Culture, 184.

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frastructure of the sea company was the basis for the establishment of the Elitzur seafaring branch, and in 1946 Elitzur’s fleet began operations in Tel Aviv.²⁷¹

The Zevulun Seafarers’ Association In 1933, five years after Zevulun’s founding, it had forty branches active in England, Canada, the United States, and Poland. Poland had two main centers—in Kraków and Warsaw—and a training center in the port of Gdynia (near Gdańsk). In the Land of Israel, the association worked in two coastal towns, Tel Aviv and Haifa: in Tel Aviv seventy students were being taught by Emanuel Tuvim, and in Haifa more than sixty were led by Zeev Hayam. Zevulun in Haifa was attached at the time to a company of the Sea Scouts called Dolphin, which had seventy children up to age seventeen.²⁷² In 1937, Tuvim contributed his ship, Ofek, to the association so that it would have a training ship for the Zevulun counselors. Four additional training ships arrived from England, a gift from Zevulun London to Zevulun Tel Aviv.²⁷³ The maritime training was manifest in its trainees’ entry into the maritime sector; that year, thirty Zevulun apprentices in the Land of Israel were reported as working at the Tel Aviv port.²⁷⁴ In late 1938, Tuvim opened Zevulun’s first naval school in Tel Aviv, an addition to the courses that had existed since 1928. The association’s outstanding students, aged fourteen to sixteen, were admitted to the school for two years of studies. The first class had fifteen students registered and nearly all completed studies, but with the outbreak of the Second World War and parents’ unwillingness to send their children to work at sea during aerial bombings the school was shuttered.²⁷⁵ In the second half of the thirties, Zevulun’s activities grew, and by the war the first piers had been built in additional coastal locations: In Herzliya, Zevulun opened a docking station on the beach, and with the help of the association a dirt road was paved for pedestrians and cars, connecting Herzliya, which was distanced from the sea,  Goldberg, “Physical Revival,” 35 – 38.  “Between Jewish Seafarers” [in Hebrew], Yediot Iriyat Tel Aviv 3 – 4, 1936, 111.  Yediot Iriyat Tel Aviv [in Hebrew] 8, 1937, 88. Ofek was a single-mast sailing yacht with an auxiliary engine, brought by Tuvim and Farbstein from a railroad engineer in Egypt in 1937. For approximately two years it served the personal purposes of its owners, and in 1936 it was damaged in a storm at the Jaffa port. After it was repaired and refurbished and twelve cabins were installed for the apprentices, it was donated by the owners to Zevulun to serve as a training boat. It served as such until the outbreak of the Second World War. See Yarkoni, The Sea, 18.  “Zevulun Party” [in Hebrew], ha-Boḳer, December 1, 1937, 5.  Memorandum about the founding of the naval school in Tel Aviv, undated, 1898/103 – 14, LI, Tel Aviv; Zeitlin, Forty Years, 12.

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to the seashore for the first time.²⁷⁶ In Hadera a branch of Zevulun was founded in the nearby Olga bay using a joint donation from Yehoshua Hankin and Henrietta Diamond.²⁷⁷ In Netanya a branch of Zevulun was founded at the intiative of Itamar Ben-Avi and headed by Oved Ben Ami, the council secretary. Right before the war, two more branches of Zevulun were founded, in Ramat Gan and in Bat Yam.²⁷⁸ A summary of Zevulun’s activity prior to the war, ten years after the association was born and twelve years after the center for maritime education was founded, shows that at that time the association had bought thirty boats with all of the necessary equipment and the number of graduates of the association’s maritime training was over four hundred.²⁷⁹ The sports associations’ growing activity in the second half of the thirties drew the notice of the Jewish Agency’s Maritime Department; moreover, as stated, one of the central goals of the founding of the PML was to coordinate all such activity under one authority. These efforts were directed primarily toward Zevulun, which grew in the second half of the thirties and was considered the largest of the nonpartisan associations.²⁸⁰ The negotiations between the Maritime Department and Zevulun lasted a number of years; their length demonstrates the Jewish Agency’s understanding that its authority over the Jewish hold on the sea in the face of private initiative and public associations was crucial. Conflicts within the leadership over its image as guiding the Yishuv’s changing attitude to the sea, as well as the emphasis on the sea’s importance and its advantages to the emerging national enterprise, would continue to grow; the Jewish hold on the sea would intensify and other sea-related issues would arise on the agenda—such as in the world of shipping, for example, as we will see in the fifth chapter. Near the end of 1937, Ben-Gurion conditioned the Jewish Agency’s share in Zevulun’s budget on Zevulun accepting the Jewish Agency’s authority. The de-

 “Cornerstone Laid for Boat Station in Herzliya” [in Hebrew], Davar, November 23, 1939, 6.  ha-Mashḳif, January 2, 1940, 4 [in Hebrew].  Thirty-Seven Years, 8 – 11.  “First Decade of Zevulun Seafarers’ Members” [in Hebrew], ha-Boḳer, October 25, 1940, 6. For reports about maritime education given by Zevulun see Zeev Vardi, interview [in Hebrew], 19 April 1995, HI, Haifa; Shabtai Levi, interview [in Hebrew], undated, HI, Haifa.  Y. Eisenberg, “Jewish Seamanship Pioneers” [in Hebrew], ha-Boḳer, October 25, 1940, 6, describes Zevulun as a large, subdivided organization, with many branches in the Land of Israel, Europe, and America. From its establishment, it raised a generation of Jewish seamen, and other associations followed in its footsteps. According to the writer, it was Zevulun that provided Tel Aviv with professional sailors and first established piers—first in Tel Aviv and later in Hadera and Herzliya—and it was Zevulun that opened the fishing school in Gdynia, Poland, where dozens of people were trained.

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mand was accepted at first in principle, but a number of follow-up meetings were held on the subject and proved unproductive. They did not lead to a practical formulation of Zevulun’s acceptance of authority; Zevulun could not recognize the Maritime Department and the PML as the leading Jewish instutions responsible for developing maritime training and enterprises, supporting and encouraging them, and at the same time, preserve its internal sovereignty.²⁸¹ For nearly two years, attempts were made to reach an agreement based on the idea that Zevulun would act under the auspices of the PML and in return receive a consistent organized income from the Jewish Agency, but ultimately Zevulun refused the proposals and the agreement went unsigned.²⁸² The outbreak of the Second World War and the leadership’s desire to prove to the British that the Yishuv wished to aid the navy in the war—and to prove, more importantly, that the Yishuv had amassed naval abilities through Jewish naval force—led a large number of the organizations occupied with athletic and professional maritime training to a joint demonstration under the auspices of the Maritime Department. On September 15, 1940, the Maritime Department organized a display on the Yarkon, with dozens of boats of various types and hundreds of members of the different maritime associations.²⁸³ Shmuel Tolkowsky, head of the PML, spoke at the event, emphasizing the special importance of the demonstration; he thus attested to the fact that the Yishuv leadership was awaiting an opportunity to come to the aid of the navy, after many of the Yishuv’s youth has volunteered to serve in the army, on land and in air. Captain Guy Onslow Lydekker, British naval commander of Palestine ports at the time, was present at the event; he noted that the drills were highly satisfactory and that the maritime education given in the Land of Israel was the best that could be given to youth. Moshe Sharett closed the event on behalf of the Jewish Agency, saying: “The Jewish Agency is pleased that it was able to assemble all of the associations occupied with marine training in one national framework.”²⁸⁴ So it was that, despite the fact that the official agreement regarding the Maritime Department’s authority over Zevulun and other maritime units had not yet been signed, ultimately a formulation was found. It would enable the Maritime De-

 B.-K. Meirovitz to E. Kaplan [in Hebrew], 4 November 1937, S11/18, CZA, Jerusalem; E. Kaplan to Mrs. Diamond via Zevulun Tel Aviv [in Hebrew], 12 November 1937, S11/18, CZA, Jerusalem.  S. Tolkowsky, head of the Palestine Maritime League, Tel Aviv, to Israel Rokach, president of Zevulun, Tel Aviv [in Hebrew], 10 June 1939, 3951/04/1375, LI, Tel Aviv.  N. A., “Demonstration of Our Maritime Training” [in Hebrew], ha-Tzofeh, September 3, 1940, 3; Emanuel Tuvim, “Chapters in the History of Zevulun” [in Hebrew], Davar, October 28, 1940, 4.  “Demonstrations of Jewish Maritime Education” [in Hebrew], Davar, September 16, 1940, 1.

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partment and the PML to exert authority over the different associations for external appearances, while preserving the autonomy of the different maritime units, which continued to operate independently without real dictates from the upper institutions of the Yishuv.

The Left-Right Political Divide in the Maritime Realm The Yishuv leadership’s desire to exert its authority over marine activity during the second half of the thirties was, at the time, part of Yishuv politics on a broader scale. It touched on the Yishuv’s growing interest in the questions of security, amassing force, and coping with a shifting reality vis-à-vis the British and the growing threats from the Arabs, which were carrying an increasingly nationalist character. Under these conditions, the consensus was so important that not accepting the authority of the central leadership, and certainly withdrawing from the consensus, were considered a threat to the very existence of the Yishuv as an autonomous society—and thus justified taking steps and even exerting force, initially meant to cope with other threats.²⁸⁵ One such struggle was with the Revisionist movement, primarily its founder Zeev Jabotinsky, whose ideas and positions opposed those of the central Zionist leadership and the workers’ movement in the Land of Israel. In the twenties and thirties, Jabotinsky expressed a conflicting approach both regarding the relationship with Britain and regarding the character of the Zionist enterprise in the Land of Israel and its relationship with the Arabs. The events of 1929 reinforced Jabotinsky’s opinion that the Zionist leadership must employ a more aggressive policy vis-à-vis Britain, a position based on encouraging mass immigration in order to create a solid Jewish majority in Palestine.²⁸⁶ In the thirties, immigration became the crux of the political conflict between the Revisionists and the heads of the Zionist Organization. The former claimed that their people were discriminated against in the allotment of immigration quotas, with the Zionist Organization leadership demanding that they be subject to the official institutions. The tensions peaked in October 1933, when Jabotinsky released an official command—command number 60—instructing Betar commissioners to obtain immigration permits directly from the Mandatory authorities,

 Gelber, “Military Strength,” in Lissak, Shapira, and Cohen, Jewish Community.  Shavit, Revisonism in Zionism, 23 – 68; Stein-Ashkenazy, “Revisionist Circles”; Robinson, Useful Storm.

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bypassing the Jewish Agency as middleman. In response, the Jewish Agency annulled Betar’s rights to receive permits as a pioneer organization; from then on, they were only able to submit immigration requests privately.²⁸⁷ One peak of the crisis was Jabotinsky’s resignation from the Zionist Organization and the founding of the New Zionist Organization (NZO) in 1935. The secession of the Revisionists was viewed as a serious threat; it reflected political opposition and peril for the existing institution. Jabotinsky and his movement strove to be an alternative to the Zionist establishment and the “old” Zionist Organization, and the struggle against them was perceived as a struggle to maintain Yishuv hegemony. The riots that broke out in 1936 caused another peak in the Yishuv’s internal disagreement about a response. The conflict transpired between the Haganah, the central military force of the organized Yishuv, which advocated a policy of restraint, and the Irgun (or Etzel, Irgun Tzvai Leumi), led by Jabotinsky, which rejected the policy and, from March 1937, took action against Arab targets, much to the chagrin of the Yishuv’s central leadership.²⁸⁸ It is no surprise, then, that the tensions between left and right included casting blame in the various nautical fields as well. One prominent accusation heard from the Revisionists at the time was that the Zionist institutions awoke too slowly to the question of the sea generally and to fishery in particular; the delay in developing the sector, they claimed, harmed the Yishuv. Despite the fact that the land had a coast that extended for 180 kilometers, a coast that could serve as a primary source of nourishment and guarantee livelihood and work for many families, they asserted, the Zionist institutions had not seen a need to accord shipping or fishery a place in settlement plans. It was claimed that the leadership demonstrated apathy to these sectors because it lacked a maritime appreciation and traditions, and this apathy meant that the seafaring professions were not valued in the way other sectors in the agricultural market were—and thus they suffered from insufficient capital, a lack of professionals, and not enough public aid.²⁸⁹ In response to these claims about the fishery sector the settlement authorities claimed that the blame should be placed on the Mandate government, which obstructed the development of the industry, did not encourage the establishment

 Robinson, Useful Storm, 159 – 62, 227– 31. For more on immigration as the factional battleground and the use of certificates as a means to achieve political objectives in the thirties, see Halamish, Dual Race, 190 – 219.  For more on the subject, see Shavit, Hunting Season.  Helpern, Revival, 277– 78; Bar-Kochba Meirovitz, “The Problem with Fishing in the Land of Israel” [in Hebrew], conference of kibbutz companies and HaNoar HaOved groups, Tsror Mikhtavim 60 (125), 11 July 1939, 11; Wydra, Fishing, 23; Gelbart, Jews and Seafaring, 278.

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of anchorages for fishing boats, and did not help market the fish, all out of a fear that the Yishuv members might learn the ways of the sea better than the British had, thus abetting illegal immigration.²⁹⁰ Moreover, it was claimed that the sea did not attract the notice of the first pioneers, whose aspiration was to strike roots in the ground and agricultural work.²⁹¹ The primary answer given to the claim about the great delay in the institutions enlisting in the conquest of the sea was that the circumstances at the time, the limited means available to the Zionist movement, had meant that matters were prioritized; there were insufficient means to develop agriculture and industry at the same time as maritime industries. However, from the mid-thirties there was an awakening because the sea could no longer be ignored: the growing rioting and events in Palestine placed immigration and the movement of essential merchandise for the physical existence of the Yishuv in jeopardy—and both were dependent on the sea, ships, and ports.²⁹² The answer was grounded in the claim that the sea had become essential and critical to the Yishuv institutions due to the new reality that had evolved, as prominently expressed in the closing of the Jaffa port and the opening of the Tel Aviv port in response, in the increased activity at the Haifa port and the renewed opening and increased activity there, and in the increased activity of the private shipping companies. One central speaker in the dispute from the Revisionist-right of the political map at the time was Captain Jeremiah Helpern, a Betar man and one of Jabotinsky’s associates.²⁹³ Helpern harshly disputed the Zionist institutions and blamed them for their lack of connection to the sea in general and the delay in developing the fishery industry in particular. In fishery, the blame cast on the British government in delaying the development of the sector was, to his mind, easily

 Meirovitz, To the Sea, 23 – 26.  Meirovitz, Jewish Fishing, 9.  Herman, Conquering a Route, 55. Tabenkin formulated it as follows: “There is conquest after conquest. Every enterprise is given to its generation and the public that lives in it and these things are not so independent of one another. Were there no conquest of the land, we would not have now reached the place in which young fishermen assemble [the first Jewish fishermen’s assembly, May 5 – 6, 1939]. There are steps”; Tabenkin, assembly of fishermen of conference of kibbutz companies and HaNoar HaOved groups [in Hebrew], Tsror Mikhtavim 60 (125), 11 July 1939, 24.  Jeremiah Helpern (1901– 1962), born in Smolensk in Russia, moved to the Land of Israel in 1913 and was drawn to the sea from his youth. In 1919 he became a crew member on the Hehalutz. In 1927 he went to Paris, where he first learned of Jabotinsky and joined Betar, and was appointed head of military training and responsible for defensive training. He was one of the founders of the Revisionist movement’s naval academy in Civitavecchia in Italy in 1934. See Weinshal, Irma; Yarkoni, The Sea, 98.

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contradicted because the government had limited the other economic sectors, which had nevertheless developed. In his opinion, the lack of action on the part of the official Zionist organizations for developing fishery stemmed from the fact that these institutions in the Land of Israel and abroad had no interest in Jewish fishery, because they saw the fishery industry as a field that negated group ideals. To ground this claim, he quoted one of the members of Kibbutz Maapilim from the mid-forties: There were those amongst us who felt that the enterprise of fishery as a whole, and deepwater fishery in particular, opposed the principles of the group. The fishermen spend their time on a ship, away from home, in an urban environment and influenced by many incidental influences. There is no doubt that distance from home weakens the connection to the group, distances them from its problems and misgivings. For roughly one and a half years our group debated the question’s resolution. We did not wish to make peace with the fact that a great number of people who were dear to us would be found outside of the framework of our lives.²⁹⁴

The national institutions’ dismissive attitude to the maritime field and its professions generally stemmed, in Helpern’s opinion, from political factors; its most prominent expression was the Maritime Department’s disregard of Betar’s calls and proposals and its maritime league, which asked for assistance before the Maritime Department was founded. In his opinion, Betar’s naval academy, in Italy, was a pioneer in the field of maritime training, and the ship that the academy purchased for that purpose was the first training ship in the world for Jewish sea officers. Had the central leadership been practical in its approach, the graduates of Betar’s academy would have been given the opportunity to take maritime leadership positions in the Yishuv, to begin developing professional Jewish fishery in the Land of Israel, and to noticeably expand the field. If that had happened, there would have been no need to invest in the “futile attempts of uninformed amateurs” or of “party politocrats,” as he called them, who had taken key positions in the Maritime Department.²⁹⁵

 Helpern, Revival, 278. Similar things about the social disconnect and the difficulties of the group members working aboard the ships can also be seen, for example, in: “The Question of Working aboard Ships” [in Hebrew], Pamphlet of Sdot Yam Group 74 (December 1, 1939); Pamphlet of Sdot Yam Group 79 [in Hebrew] (April 5, 1940).  Helpern, Revival, 307. Helpern’s book is written in sharp polemical tone and he relates at length to the Yishuv institutions’ policy, which in his opinion discriminated against all maritime activity of the Revisionist groups in the Yishuv throughout the period.

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The Establishment of the Betar Naval Academy in Civitavecchia, Italy One of the responses to the restrictions on immigration to the Land of Israel came in the form of growing attempts at illegal entry, first by land and, later, by sea, using ships that left the ports of Europe and headed for the ports in Palestine at great risk. The first three illegal voyages from Europe took place in the summer of 1934—two carrying HeHalutz members on the Velos, and the third carrying Polish Betar members on the Union. ²⁹⁶ One of the professional pioneering training methods for immigrants to the Land of Israel that the Revionist Movement wished to encourage was maritime training, which both aligned with the shaping of a “new Jew”—an anti-Diasporic, able-bodied person who would work in fields that had not been customary in the Diaspora—and would allow Jewish seafarers to make contact with Jews overseas and help them in their immigration. This last approach also corresponded with Jabotinsky’s view of the sea: he saw it as a cornerstone for Zionist sovereignty, which did not delimit national aspirations by clear boundaries but rather broke through boundaries beyond territorial borders.²⁹⁷ Betar’s naval training took place in two naval academies for sea officers in Europe, the first in Riga, Latvia, and the second, which we will discuss at greater length, in Civitavecchia, a port city some eighty kilometers north of Rome.²⁹⁸ An Italian governmental school had operated there for a number of years, and between 1934 and 1938 it trained select Betar members from Europe and the Land of Israel in seafaring profes-

 Avneri, “Velos” to “Taurus,” 21– 32. Velos (speedy in Greek) was organized by the Haganah and was the first (in July 1934) to bring illegal immigrants from Europe. It was preceded by a number of months, it appears, by the Kawkab, which was organized by the Revisionist movement and left Alexandria, Egypt (January 1934) with fifty immigrants on board. For more on the dispute about who arrived first in the Land of Israel by sea illegally, see Robinson, Useful Storm, 222– 25.  Robinsin, Useful Storm, 225 – 26; for more on Jabotinsky’s approach to the Jewish sea and its conquest see above, chapter 1.  On Civitavecchia and the daily studies at the naval academy there see Kenan, Looking Back, 53 – 63. Betar’s naval academy in Riga, Latvia, was active between 1935 and 1938 and relatively little is known about it. The trainees underwent training on a sailboat called Theodor Herzl. It was a ship that had transported cargo and coal on the Baltic Sea, and as such novices who had not been trained in shipping could not be brought aboard. This led Betar in Latvia to purchase a motorized sailboat called HaAhat (the One) which served for the early training before they boarded the Theodor Herzl. Another source notes that roughly eighty Betar members trained there. See ha-Yam ṿe-ha-Avir A [in Hebrew], September 19, 1937, 8. An additional source notes that forty-two students trained on the ship, but only twenty of them completed their training and received certification; Helpern, Revival, 222– 27.

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sions on the level of other governmental schools in Italy.²⁹⁹ Betar had three overt goals in founding the training academy: training Jewish youth in professions related to the sea; instilling the idea of conquest of the sea in Jewish society; and fostering initiatives on the part of wealthy Jews to invest money in purchasing maritime equipment and establishing Jewish marine enterprises in the Land of Israel.³⁰⁰ Over the course of four years, 120 students in Civitavecchia—in three classes—received wide-ranging training in seafaring professions. The establishment of the naval academy accorded with Jabotinsky’s worldview and aspirations to change the character of Jewish youth in the Diaspora, creating the image of a new, proud Jew. Mussolini’s racist campaign against Jews in late 1938 put an end to the school’s activities and to the activities of the Revisionist movement in Italy more generally.³⁰¹ The curriculum at the school consisted of theoretical studies in four areas— shipping, mechanics, fishery, and shipbuilding—with practical experience in sailing. At the end of their studies, the students underwent two tests, the first from the school and the second from an Italian governmental committee. Those who passed both examinations received certification as skippers, allowing them to command a ship in the waters of the Mediterranean. Practical authori-

 The fact that Italian captain Nicola Fusco—who was enthusiastic about the idea of Jewish conquest of the sea and considered a first-class maritime expert in Italy at the time—agreed to run the school and train students was helpful. He was especially well-versed in fishery: he brought motorization into the Italian fishing fleet, he wrote books about fishery, and his biometric maps were used as guides for Italian fishing. For first-person, detailed accounts about the founding of the school and Captain Fusco, see Helpern, Revival, 104– 18.  Markovizky, “Forerunner”; for other accounts of the activity in the naval academy in Italy see Erell, Facing the Sea, 24– 36; Kenan, Looking Back, 31– 61.  Markovizky, “Forerunner.” The school had fishery training, with people from the Land of Israel and the Diaspora, and the practical training took place on local fishing boats. The number of students in this framework was the smallest; the second year, which opened in June 1936, ended with seven students, and with the class’s graduation, five graduates moved to the Land of Israel with immigration visas; these were given to them by the Jewish Agency’s Aliyah Department, after Eliyahu Dobkin, head of the department, came there in early 1937 to see the school with his own eyes. Dobkin was evidently impressed by what he saw and was willing to grant immigration visas if they would take them as private individuals rather than members of Betar. Five graduates of the course took him up on his offer and two joined later; with three more from the Land of Israel, a group of ten fishermen settled on the banks of the Yarkon early in the summer of 1937. This group, called “Reading,” received some aid from the Jewish Agency’s Maritime Department, but was not destined to last long; it dismantled in 1939. See Porat, Fishery Pioneers, 52– 53; Helpern, Revival, 297.

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zation to command was supposed to be given after three years of practical work on a ship at sea and at the minimum age of twenty-one.³⁰²

Purchase of the Sara A Training Ship and Its Arrival in the Land of Israel An important step in the graduates’ apprenticeship was the purchase of a training ship in 1935. This was accomplished with the help of the Tel Hai Fund, and primarily thanks to a contribution from Yefim Krishner, chair of the Hebrew Shipping Alliance in Paris and a wealthy fur trader. After its purchase it was named Sara, for Krishner’s wife, but as the French ships’ registry already had another ship named Sara an A was added to its name.³⁰³ Sara A enabled the cadets to train in practical shipping. It sailed three times between ports on the Mediterranean Sea and parts of the Atlantic, navigated by the school’s students. These journeys also served as propaganda for the conquest of the sea and for the collection of donations at the various ports.³⁰⁴

 L. Bela, Maritime Department secretary, “Tokhniot ha-Limudim ṿe-Tnaei ha-Ḳabala shel Beit ha-Sefer ha-Yami le-Ḳtsinim shel ha-Maḥlaka ha-Yamit be-Shilṭon Betar be-Civitavecchia,” London, 4 November 1936, ‫ח‬1/12, Jabotinsky Institute (hereafter: JI), Tel Aviv. Helpern claims, likely quite correctly, that it was nearly impossible to find graduates of the school on Jewish ships in those days because they spread around the world, most probably due in large part to the Jewish Agency’s embargo, which would not give Betar’s sailors certificates to immigrate to the Land of Israel. See: Unsigned survey (likely Helpern), untitled, 27 July 1938, ‫ח‬1/8, JI, Tel Aviv. This claim is also reinforced in the attitude to the fishermen trained in Civitavecchia who attempted to move to the Land of Israel.  The ship was built in 1898 at Port Blakely in Washington in the United States for an American admiral, and he circumnavigated the globe a number of times. It was built of pine and had a capacity of 760 tons. It had two diesel one-hundred-horsepower engines, it had four masts— the tallest reaching forty-two meters—schooner sails, and an American clipper body. For more on the ship’s statistics and names, see Kenan, Looking Back, 31– 32; Yarkoni, The Sea, 272 and sources there.  Ha-Yam ha-Ivri [in Hebrew], year 1, issue 1, July 27, 1936, 1; ha-Yam ha-Ivri [in Hebrew], year 1, issue 4, December 1, 1936, 2; ha-Yam ha-Ivri [in Hebrew], year 2, issue 5, March 15, 1937, 2; haYam ha-Ivri [in Hebrew], year 2, issue 8, May 30, 1937, 1; J. Helpern, Report of the Maritime Department under Betar for the third international assembly [in Hebrew], 1938, ‫ח‬19/1, JI, Tel Aviv; ha-Yam ṿe-ha-Aṿir 1, September 19, 1937, 8. The end of the Sara A came in late January 1938; while it was under Helpern’s command it ran aground in southeast Corsica and from there was towed to a shipyard in Livorno. There it became apparent that the repairs would be beyond the financial capabilities of the academy, and its ownership passed on to the shipyard. For first-person accounts of the events and the attempts to save it, see Kenan, Looking Back, 48 – 54. For more details, see “Sara A Fighting with Waves in Corsica” [in Hebrew], ha-Boḳer, February 10, 1938, 4; “What Happened to the Sara A?” [in Hebrew], Haaretz, February 25, 1938, 3; G. Boyevsky,

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In early September 1937, the Sara A reached the Land of Israel on its third trip in the Mediterranean Sea, with forty-five officers and graduates of the third class of the school aboard. Its arrival raised the expected conflict, which highlighted the growing political divergences between right and left in the land at the time. The ship arrived at the Haifa port, but the festive reception held was attended by Betar representatives alone, and not representatives of the Yishuv institutions or the PML. The New Zionist Organization’s appeal to the Jewish Community Council in Haifa to sign a poster in which the arrival of the ship would be publicized was rejected with the explanation that the committee could not participate in the reception for a ship that belonged to one party, and as such the PML, too, would not take part in the reception, which was perceived as a political event.³⁰⁵ Nonetheless, Sara A stayed in the Land of Israel about a month, and its presence aroused, it would appear, great excitement. During its stay, many people visited its deck, including rabbis, mayors, and other dignitaries, and receptions were held in its honor at a number of locations around the country.³⁰⁶ In response to the boycott of the reception of the Sara A, an editorial was written in ha-Boḳer at the time: If we were not so divided to the point of ugliness, right now the entire Jewish Yishuv, with all of its groups, would be greeting the Sara A with open affection…. The very fact of our being subject daily and hourly to the avaricious party authority positions any achievement that is national in its nature in a factional light. Members of a healthy nation know how to rejoice together and to suffer together, and we are not these. The Revisionists were those who began maritime education on a serious scale, Zevulun developed comprehensive sea labor, but when the Jewish Agency—years too late—awoke to pronounce the “conquest of the sea,” the maritime pioneers were forgotten. The Palestine Maritime League—an instrumental and important institution in its essence—which is officially supported by the Jewish Agency and serves as the official maritime representative of the Yishuv was built as if on the land of Genesis…. As such, the arrival of the Sara A was not exploited to dem-

“The Adventures of the Sara A” [in Hebrew], Haaretz, March 31, 1938, 3; Erell, Facing the Sea, 26 – 36.  “The Sara A Training Ship Arrives in Haifa” [in Hebrew], ha-Boḳer, September 2, 1937, 1. For accounts about the work aboard the Sara A and its visit in the Land of Israel, see Haim Refaeli, interview [in Hebrew], 27 April 1995, HI, Haifa.  Erell, Facing the Sea, 26. According to Erell, a student from the school in Civitavecchia who came to the Land of Israel with the Sara A, it seems that its appearance in the Land of Israel and the establishment of the maritime league were what motivated the official institutions of the Yishuv to found the Palestine Maritime League and open the maritime school next to the Technion in Haifa; ibid., 26 – 27.

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onstrate the idea of the sea, just as Zevulun Week was not exploited…. There is nothing new in the attempt to cause the forgetting of the “unwanted” enterprises….³⁰⁷

Another editorial stated: Political silencing is a method, a tried and tested method, but a very questionable one. It is effective for a time, sometimes for an entire generation, but history is ultimately the true judge and it has no prejudice…. And so it will be as well with the training ship Sara A, which the political minds are now attempting to kill by silence—because it is a Revisionist enterprise, because it is a result of activity that has taken place over a number of years, and whose beginning was tied to days of disparaging “Jabotinsky’s fleet.” Now we again disparage the fleet and the training of sailors and officers is no longer a thing of “a psalm to the future.” But it is distasteful to admit the truth, that others beat us in foresight. And this silencing will not help. Come or do not come to greet the ship and its sailors—this is unimportant. The training ship Sara A is a living fact, and its place in the chronicles of the Yishuv is one of honor.³⁰⁸

The political dispute about the arrival of the Sara A in the Land of Israel had broken out a few months earlier, when in response to the PML’s establishment by the Jewish Agency’s Maritime Department and the Revisionists’ claims of discrimination, with their exclusion from the PML, the Revisionist movement established the Jewish Maritime and Aviation League.³⁰⁹ The league’s goals included the aspiration to develop all existing Jewish maritime enterprises, both in the Land of Israel and overseas, including the naval academy in Civitavecchia, and ensuring that professions of the sea and air suffered no discrimination based on affiliation or party within the nation of Israel. “Party domination is not our way, and our watchword will be: The Jewish sea and the skies of our land—for the entire nation of Israel!”³¹⁰ However, despite the conflict, near the end of 1938, after the closure of the naval academy in Civitavacchia and the end of the Revisionist movement’s activities in Italy generally, the movement looked for a way to open a naval school in  Y. Z., “On Our Agenda—Sara A” [in Hebrew], ha-Boḳer, evening supplement, September 2, 1937, 1.  B. D., “More on the Arrival of the Sara A” [in Hebrew], ha-Boḳer, evening supplement, September 3, 1937, 2.  Protocol from the founding of the Jewish Maritime and Aviation League, 28 April 1937, ‫ח‬1/ 1– 2, JI, Tel Aviv. So, for example, it was claimed that Betar members, who had established the Hasapan cooperative for building ships, had been dispossessed by Prika and Mapai, with the port ordering some of its boats from Arabs and the rest from the Prika shipyard in the Tel Aviv port. S. Rosenbaum, secretary of the Jewish Maritime and Aviation League, to the head office of the Tel Hai Fund [in Hebrew], 16 July 1938, ‫ח‬1/2– 3, JI, Tel Aviv.  Jewish Maritime and Aviation League pamphlet [in Hebrew], ‫ח‬2/1– 3, JI, Tel Aviv.

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the Land of Israel. Oved Ben Ami, the mayor of Netanya, showed great interest, and negotiations were conducted—reaching advanced stages—about opening a naval school in Netanya with the cooperation of three groups: the Hebrew Shipping Alliance, the Tel Hai Fund, and the Netanya municipality. The school was named “The Mediterranean”—Netanya Maritime College. An initial sum of money was raised for running the institution, equipment began to be transferred for study, a number of Jewish officers from the Italian navy—who had been fired for being Jewish and were willing to enlist for the project—were interviewed, and steps were taken to purchase a training ship for the school in Cyprus. On May 26, 1939, an agreement was signed between the three founding bodies. But it was not to be: the gathering war clouds and the impossibility of guaranteeing a fixed budget for maintaining the school made things difficult, and it was never established.³¹¹ The plethora of activities that took place in the five years prior to the Second World War broadened the Jewish Yishuv’s hold on the sea and its shores in four ways: by taking positions in the country’s ports and creating a Jewish outlet to the sea; in the entry of private Jewish shipping companies to work in the land’s ports; with the founding of the first fishing settlements and the laying of groundwork for organized Jewish fishery; and in expanding the field of training youth in sea professions and adults to take positions in the various maritime enterprises. The highlight of the shift taking place during these years was without a doubt what occurred at the ports. Jaffa’s port closed to Jews with the outbreak of the Arab Revolt; nonetheless, compared to the early days of British reign, when Jews did not work at ports at all and only a few had begun to work at the Haifa port in the early twenties, Jews’ entry to port work kept growing, primarily after the British port was opened in late 1933. On the eve of the Second World War, then, the majority of workers at the Haifa port were Jews who had managed to infiltrate most branches of port work. Moreover, in reponse to the closure of the Jaffa port to Jews, the process of the Yishuv drawing closer to the sea accelerated, and as a result the Tel Aviv port—the first Jewish port in Palestine, in which all workers were Jews—was founded in 1936. The struggles that took place over work in ports in Palestine were tied to national dimensions of the  J. Helpern, report on activity of the Jewish Shipping Alliance, the creation of a maritime school in the Land of Israel [in Hebrew], December 1938, ‫ח‬1/18, JI, Tel Aviv; Jewish Shipping Alliance to Oved Ben Ami, mayor of Netanya [in Hebrew], 15 January 1939, ‫ח‬1/22, JI, Tel Aviv; O. Ben-Ami, mayor, Netanya, to Y. Bloch, Jewish Shipping Alliance, Tel Aviv [in Hebrew], 30 January 1939, ‫ח‬1/22, JI, Tel Aviv.

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Jewish Yishuv’s sovereignty in general and maritime sovereignty in particular, and—as we will see in the upcoming two chapters—these struggles would continue to grow during the war and the subsequent years until the founding of the State. The new reality in which Jewish laborers worked in ports included the shipping field, in which a number of large private Jewish shipping companies were inaugurated and shipping lines between Palestine and other destinations around the world were created. But at this time the Yishuv leadership was still unable to become involved in the world of shipping, as sadly became clear with the unavoidable sale of the Tel Aviv. In contrast, the fishery sector saw the prominent involvement of the Yishuv institutions and many changes were noticeable, both in attitude and in action. The renewal and development of Jewish fishery took place in no small part thanks to the involvement of the Jewish Agency’s Maritime and Fisheries Department, which at the time labored to revive Jewish fishery on the shores of the sea and the lakes; the majority of the change was in the support given for the founding of the first fishing settlements. The youth that entered the sector no longer settled for traditional fishery, which had been prominent in the country for many generations. While they did learn the tradition of coastal fishing from their predecessors, with the help of the Fisheries Department they began to use new methods, based on the experience of professionals who came from more developed countries, primarily the Yugoslavian and Italian fishermen. These taught them new techniques, and they developed trawling. The Maritime and Fisheries Department also helped fund the purchase of the first trawlers for the fishing farms. Other expressions of the growing maritime awareness in the Yishuv from the second half of the thirties until the outbreak of the Second World War were the increase in activity of maritime divisions and water sports associations. Most of the trainees worked at the Tel Aviv port, were occupied with swimming and sailing, and were trained in the different fields associated with the sea. The increasing activity in the sports associations led the Yishuv leadership, first and foremost the Jewish Agency’s Maritime and Fisheries Department, to attempt to coordinate this activity under their auspices—with only partial success—and to enter battle over the leadership’s image and its national character as representing the entire Jewish public. Despite the inroads made, as we will see in the next chapter, it would not be long before the Yishuv and its leadership’s “maritime awakening” would be forced to deal with another great maritime challenge: the closure of the land’s ports to civil activity as well as other restrictions that resulted from the outbreak of the Second World War.

Chapter 4: Evolution during a Time of Paralysis: Jewish Maritime Activity in the Land of Israel during the Second World War, 1939 – 1945 The years of the Second World War can be divided into three periods, all of which directly affected maritime activity in the Mediterranean: During the first stage, the initial ten months after the war’s outbreak in September 1939 until Italy’s declaration of war in June 1940, Palestine was removed from the battlefields, and the Mediterranean remained open to civilians. The second stage extended two and a half years, from Italy entering the fray alongside Germany until the Allies’ victory over the Germans and Italians in El Alamein in late 1942. Throughout this period Palestine served as a home front base for the Allied forces fighting the Nazis and their allies in different parts of the Middle East and North Africa. The German Air Force infiltrated the skies over the Mediterranean Sea (in January 1941), and from the end of that year the Germans used submarines in the Mediterranean Sea alongside Italian torpedo boats. Maritime commerce was disabled and all other civilian sailing—including light fishing—was forbidden, with the exception of limited coastal commerce along the eastern basin of the Mediterranean. Practically speaking, Palestine was cut off from the rest of the world by sea. This reality began to change in early 1943, when the front gradually moved away from the Middle East; in this third stage, for the two and a half years preceding the war’s end in May 1945, the Allies overcame Germany and Italy in North Africa and the war retreated from the Mediterranean Sea region.¹ The near-total restriction of civilian transport in the Mediterranean’s waters led to the closure of Palestine’s ports to civilian interests. Activity at the ports was limited primarily to the needs of the British Royal Navy, which even requisitioned a good number of the Jewish vessels that were in the land at the time, leading to stagnation in the shipping sector. Fishery in the Mediterranean waters, primarily light fishing, was forbidden, for fear that fishing boats would be easy targets for German and Italian planes in their aerial bombing. The Yishuv took pains to adapt its maritime activity to the new reality of war. This was expressed in a number of fields: Jewish laborers began performing the professional port work necessary for the British fleet during the war, serving as

 Avigur et al., Hagana, 3:1:91– 103; Sharfman, Second World War. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110633528-006

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welders and electricians at the Haifa port and shipbuilders and menders in the Tel Aviv port. Jews enlisted in the British navy and served in different professions based on the needs of the fleet. In fishery, emphasis was placed on developing the fish farming sector (pisciculture), which was independent of the sea; during the war years, it became an important component in the fishery industry in the country generally, and within Jewish fishery specifically. Efforts were made to continue to hold civilian maritime training and to expand the studies, in order to lay the groundwork for maritime defense training; this would be expressed practically only after the Second World War, primarily in the conflicts with the British regarding illegal immigration in the three years prior to the founding of the State.

The Land of Israel’s Ports during the Second World War The outbreak of the Second World War in the summer of 1939 had an effect on work and movement in the land’s ports. Despite being a relatively small piece of land within the empire, the country was situated at the heart of a region that had great strategic importance for the British Empire—with Egypt and the Suez Canal to the southwest and Iraq and its oil to the northeast.² The war with Nazi Germany led to a noticeable reduction in ship movement and civilian cargo and passenger transport. With Italy joining the fray alongside Germany in mid-1940, free civilian transport in the Mediterranean Sea came to a near-complete standstill. Jaffa and Tel Aviv’s ports, which were unprotected, closed, and a good number of their vessels were commandeered by the British navy for the war effort. The small amounts of cargo that did arrive were mostly for military purposes; civilian work at the ports reached a near-total shutdown. In 1942, the lowest amount of cargo in the Jaffa and Tel Aviv ports throughout the entire Mandate period was recorded: in the former, 5,119 tons of cargo were recorded; in the latter, a mere 1,300 tons. In contrast, the Haifa port became the central one for Palestine during the war, as is evident from the data that compare the year of the war’s outbreak, 1939, and the end of the war in 1945: 63 percent of the country’s export and 71 percent of import passed through Haifa’s port right before the war; at the war’s end, 95 percent of export and 92 percent of import traversed it. Only

 Lissak, Shapira, and Cohen, Jewish Community, 3:572.

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8 percent of the import and 5 percent of the export were transported through Jaffa and Tel Aviv’s ports together in 1945.³

The Haifa Port during the Second World War The lion’s share of Jewish port activity during the war took place in Haifa, but given the shifting reality the port underwent no small number of upheavals. Part of the port and the area around it became a strategic military compound, with units stationed there and warehouses commandeered for the storage of government equipment.⁴ In the early war years, 1939 – 1941, a dramatic decrease in the number of ships anchoring in the Haifa port was reported. Export came near a standstill, and import was reduced to a minimum—all due to the closure of the Mediterranean Sea because of the danger of submarines and aerial bombings. A great number of the port’s workers, both kibbutz members and individuals, left the port, some to enlist in the British army and some to transition to agricultural settlement or other jobs. The two crucial sectors that were primarily abandoned were customs porterage and stevedoreship.⁵ Other workers, those who remained at the port and the nearby strategic factories such as the refineries, also left when Italy joined Germany and conditions worsened; they feared aerial bombings, given Haifa’s position as a strategic center for the British military in the Middle East.⁶ Right before the war, Haifa’s port had thirteen hundred Jewish workers out of a total two thousand, and they made up more than 50 percent of the port’s workers (see table 3.1). In contrast, in late 1941 there was a great dip in the activity at the port; some eleven hundred workers remained—a decrease of nearly 50 percent of the total workers—of whom roughly five hundred were Jewish and six hundred were Arab.⁷ The Haifa Workers’ Council expressed concern at the drastic drop in the number of Jewish workers at the port, and the fear

 Bar-Kochba Meirovitz, “Summary of a Period in Jewish Maritime Enterprises” [in Hebrew], Yam, October–November 1946, 9; Avitsur, Rise and Fall, 173 – 76.  Stern, “Port in Haifa,” in Naor and Ben-Artzi, Haifa, 171– 74; Lydekker, “Haifa.” For correspondence about the allocation of land in the port for a British naval base, see M-1/364, ISA, Jerusalem.  A. Hushi, “Tazkir al Efsharut Pituaḥ Ḥaifa be-Tor Ir Namal,” Haifa, 26 December 1944, ID 726, HMA, Haifa.  Biletsky, Creativity and Struggle, 243 – 44.  Wydra to B.-K. Meirovitz [in Hebrew], 17 November 1941, S74/147, CZA, Jerusalem.

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arose that if steps were not taken to preserve positions at the port the entire workplace would slip from the Jews’ grasp.⁸ Two years after the war began, however, a change took place: with the German military nearing the gates of Egypt, during the campaign for El Alamein, a good portion of the British navy’s storehouses and workshops were moved from Egypt’s ports to Haifa. With the Haifa port at its disposal, the navy created workshops in the cargo warehouses, brought a floating dock for repairing ships, and established a workshop company at the port for the same purpose.⁹ The Histadrut took great pains to gain access to work at the Royal Navy’s workshops and warehouses, and the Yishuv made itself available for the nautical jobs in wartime. Factories and workshops from Haifa and its environs repaired more than a thousand warships and merchant ships, in addition to commissions by the navy forces. This was the backdrop for the changes that took place in the workforce at the port: while the number of Jewish workers in traditional port jobs continued to be low near the end of the war—only four hundred—the overall number of Jewish workers at the port grew, thanks to the increasing number of Jews working for the Royal Navy and in jobs connected to it. The vast majority of Jewish workers for the Royal Navy were professionals—welders, carpenters, electricians, and those with a new profession: shipbuilding and repair. Near the end of the war, the total number of Jewish workers hit a new high, between 1,800 and 2,150.¹⁰ Solel Boneh was also part of the Jews’ involvement in the Haifa port during the war; it worked to fortify the port against naval and aerial attacks.¹¹

The Tel Aviv Port during the Second World War The war disabled regular work at the Tel Aviv port almost completely. Its workers enlisted and dispersed; a small core group remained during the war to do the crucial maintenance work, serving the limited Jewish coastal shipping that

 Plenary meeting of Labor Bureau, Haifa Workers’ Council Bulletin [in Hebrew], August 1942, 5, S74/147, CZA, Jerusalem; B.-K. Meirovitz to Abba Hushi, Haifa Workers’ Council [in Hebrew], 7 September 1942, S74/147, CZA, Jerusalem.  Ashner, “Secret.”  Haifa Affairs Committee—Subcommittee for Port Affairs, first meeting [in Hebrew], 7 December 1944, ID 726, HMA, Haifa; lecture on the state after the war, most likely from Dr. Wydra [in Hebrew] (most likely mid-1944), S74/202, CZA, Jerusalem.  Solel Boneh was asked to build cannon positions and watchtowers on the breakwaters; Dan, Solel Boneh, 169.

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Fig. 9: Salonican Workers at the Haifa port, 1943, photographer unknown (Eli Roman, Private Collection)

made use of the port.¹² The floating gear and other equipment were transferred, by order of the Royal Navy, to operations of ports in North Africa that were conquered by the Allied forces in 1942, after the Second Battle of El Alamein. However, the port did not close completely; rather, it adapted to the war conditions, serving as an important element in the Yishuv’s contribution to the war effort.¹³ The port also served as a base for Jewish deepwater fishing boats, whose numbers actually grew in the war years, as we will see. Another significant contribution to the war was the company of Jewish port workers, which was recruited from among the port workers in Tel Aviv and even trained there.¹⁴ During the war years, the army leased a good portion of the port, including its large warehouses, for the purposes of establishing workshops. The lease of this equipment enabled the Marine Trust to cover some of the expenses  “Reducing the Work in the Tel Aviv Port” [in Hebrew], Haaretz, June 24, 1940, 1.  Bar-Kochba Meirovitz, “Summary of a Period in Jewish Maritime Enterprises” [in Hebrew], Yam, October–November 1946, 9 – 10.  “The Tel Aviv Port’s Service for the War Effort” [in Hebrew], Davar, December 11, 1944, 4.

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of maintaining the port.¹⁵ In October 1944, the prohibition on anchoring and loading boats at the port was revoked, but the basic equipment for running the port, requisitioned by the army and never returned, was missing.¹⁶ Meanwhile, another important field developed in the land’s ports during the war: shipyards for the repair and building of ships, fishing boats, and minesweepers were established in Haifa, Tel Aviv, and Caesarea; commissions from the British navy were submitted to the Jewish Agency.¹⁷

Construction of Boats and Minesweepers in the Land’s Ports during the War Shipbuilding in Palestine centered for many years around a few craftsmen in Jaffa and a small number in Haifa. Before the Tel Aviv port was built, the Yishuv had no access to the sea, and thus shipbuilding had not developed as a profession.¹⁸ With the birth of sea sports in Palestine in the twenties, the building of ships for that purpose rose on the agenda; a new type of vessel, which the existing Arab shipyards did not know how to build, was needed for athletics. The first attempts to build boats for sport or fishing were made by members of the sports associations and Jewish fishermen on the Yarkon and Lake Kinneret. In 1928, the first attempt to build a boat for rowing and sailing was made on the Yarkon. The boat was the Snunit (Swallow), belonging to the Hapoel Tel Aviv sea company. One of the first Jewish shipbuilders in the Land of Israel was Zalman Cohen, who settled on the banks of the Yarkon and established a shipyard there. At first, Cohen built small flat boats for travelers; afterwards he began to build motorboats. In 1932, a fifteen-meter-long motorboat with one hundred seats and a capacity of twenty-five to thirty tons was built at the shipyard.¹⁹ What was ostensibly the first Jewish attempt on the part of port workers to build a shipyard took place in 1933 in Haifa. Next to the Shemen factory, on the shores of the sea, the group built a workshop, and the shipyard made a number of boats of various

 Marine Trust Limited, eighth annual report of the board of directors for 1944 [in Hebrew], S30/4629, CZA, Jerusalem.  E. Shechter, “Jubilee,” in Lutsky, Tel Aviv Port, x.  Wydra, “Jewish Fishing” [in Hebrew], Yam, July 1945, 5.  E. Tuvim, “Bniyat Sirot be-Namal Tel Aviv,” undated, 9149/35 – 0149, TAA, Tel Aviv.  Avitsur, Yarkon, 124– 29; Hayam, Ships’ Tales, 213 – 16. For more on the Snunit, see Ran, Fleet, 9 – 18.

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types. The group repaired boats belonging to sea companies, ships belonging to the companies that built the Haifa port, and private ships.²⁰ With the inauguration of the Tel Aviv port and the beginning of cargo unloading, in 1936, the urgent need for the Yishuv to expand its repair and building of boats arose—primarily due to the Arabs’ refusal to supply boats to the new Jewish port. The port’s administration established a shipyard north of the anchorage, and it began building fifty- and sixty-ton boats. It also appealed to private enterprise, to two private carpentry workshops in Tel Aviv: Zalman Cohen— who had already begun to build boats on the shores of the Yarkon—and the Alexandrovitch brothers. With receipt of the permit to disembark passengers at the port, in 1938, the building of a motorboat for transporting passengers began at the port’s shipyard. Its construction was perceived as a noteworthy achievement, a symbol in the Yishuv’s process of conquest of the sea at the time; it was both the first boat to bring passengers to the Tel Aviv port and the first boat to be built in full at the port’s shipyard.²¹ During the war, a noticeable development took place in Jewish shipyards in the country, primarily because of the growth in fishery on the shores of the land and the many difficulties in purchasing fishing boats from external sources. The lack of building materials stopped the shipyards’ development; despite that, the shipyards in Haifa, Tel Aviv, and Caesarea made twenty new fishing boats available to fishing authorities. As a result of the experience they garnered, the Jewish shipyards were to a great extent able to supply the needs of the Yishuv’s maritime expansion in sailing and fishing boats.²² At the beginning of the war, Haifa’s Ogen group established a shipyard that was initially located in a carpentry workshop outside of the Haifa bay; later in the war it was moved to the port. The plethora of work led to the shipyard’s firm establishment. With time, Ogen transferred the shipyard to Solel Boneh, which expanded it; it built motorboats and larger ships and repaired ships as well. At that time, Kibbutz Mishmar HaYam erected a shipyard on the grounds of Kibbutz Kiryat Haim, building primarily fishing boats. The members of Sdot Yam also established a shipyard for building boats in their settlement in Caesarea, and this developed in the war years, with the construction of training boats, fishing boats, and ships. On other settlements on the shores of Lake Kinneret the need for vessels and a place to repair them

 The group in Haifa was headed by Nachum Teicher and A. Balinki. For a first-person account, see Nahum Teicher, “Building Ships in the Land of Israel” [in Hebrew], Yam, October 1945, 4– 6; Hayam, Ships’ Tales, 213 – 16.  E. Tuvim, “Bniyat Sirot be-Namal Tel Aviv,” undated, 9149/35 – 0149, TAA, Tel Aviv.  Bar-Kochba Meirovitz, “Summary of a Period in Jewish Maritime Enterprises” [in Hebrew], Yam, October–November 1946, 9.

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grew, and in 1945 Kibbutz Ein Gev founded a shipyard for the construction and repair of various types of boats.²³ The war years gave the Jewish shipyards experience in building different vessels for the British navy as well, from invasion boats to small motorboats to the minesweepers built in the Tel Aviv port.²⁴ Minesweeper construction developed after the British retreated from Crete and the Germans blocked supply routes in the Mediterranean Sea using mines. There was an urgent need to begin building minesweepers to clear sea passages. With most of the professionals concentrated in Haifa, the Middle East naval command viewed the port city as the appropriate place to establish the shipyards that would aid the fleet. In late 1941, Captain Lydekker, commander of the British navy in Palestine and the eastern basin of the Mediterranean Sea, arrived in Haifa with a small group of officers, and they began to gather a group of professionals.²⁵ After inspections were conducted, Zalman Cohen’s shipyard on the Yarkon and the Marine Trust’s shipyard at the Tel Aviv port were selected as the suitable ones for the building of minesweepers; in early 1943 the two shipyards received a joint order to build two minesweepers.²⁶ The minesweepers were mostly complete in late 1943. After that, the navy requested that the mechanization and electricity be installed, and that was also done at the shipyard once the machines themselves were brought from England and the United States. The ships’ construction was completed at the end of 1944, and they were handed over to the navy in the early months of 1945. These were the first ships built in Palestine for the British navy.²⁷

 Nahum Teicher, “Building Ships in the Land of Israel” [in Hebrew], Yam, October 1945, 4– 6. As we saw in the previous chapter, Ogen was founded in the winter of 1934 by the Hapoel sea company members, and was occupied at first with transferring immigrants from ships to the shore via motorboats. During the Second World War its activities expanded to building small vessels from wood at the shipyard. In 1940, Ogen began to work on larger jobs for the British military and navy. At the end of the war, Ogen absorbed a large group of former members of the British Royal Navy. During the War of Independence, the Ogen group maintained contact by sea with the otherwise isolated town of Nahariya. See Y. Yudenfreund, “The Ogen Shipyard” [in Hebrew], Yam, February–March 1949, 17; Zeev Hayam, Ships’ Tales, 78. On the Ein Gev shipyard, see Kuchinski, Ein Gev, 24– 25, 29 – 30.  H. Zuckerman, “From War to Peace” [in Hebrew], Yam, April–May 1946, 4– 6.  Hayam, Ships’ Tales, 205.  Avitsur, Yarkon, 129; Hayam, Ships’ Tales, 209. Over the years Zalman Cohen’s shipyard was upgraded and became the largest private shipyard in the country. In mid-1942, it was reported that Cohen’s shipyard built a large ship, with a capacity of 250 tons; officers visiting the ship marveled at the quality of the work. See Bar-Kochba Meirovitz to E. Kaplan [in Hebrew], 4 June 1942, S74/283/3, CZA, Jerusalem.  The experience garnered from building the two ships was great; it was claimed that the shipyard’s products were of equal quality to that of older shipyards and that the navy’s officers who

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An additional innovation of the Marine Trust in Tel Aviv early in the war was the founding of a division known as the Salvage Division, a special unit for the rescue of merchandise from ships that had sunk or goods that had fallen from ships to the sea; it also provided assistance to small ships in distress. The stimulus for this came from Italy’s entry in the war; the authorities recognized the need to dismantle shipwreck remains entirely so that they not serve as a sign for enemy planes. The job was given to a company of Australian engineers, but they were helped by the people at the Tel Aviv port and their equipment. In one operation, the Salvage Division extracted eighty crates with agricultural equipment, twenty-two cars, and a large number of tires from the water.²⁸

Shipping and Enlistment in the British Navy in the Second World War During the war, global commercial shipping operated on a very limited level, and Palestine was nearly completely paralyzed. The well-established economic sector of citrus growth reached a state of acute crisis with the lack of ships to transport its produce to markets; prices soared to 400 or 500 percent greater than the accepted prices in peacetime. Refugee immigration also suffered with the dearth of ships.²⁹ All merchant ships—a total capacity of eleven thousand tons—were seized or leased during the war by the British Royal Navy’s Ministry of War Transport and used in British service for the war. The cost of the war to Jewish shipping was great: fifty Jewish seamen who enlisted in the Royal Navy

saw the ships expressed the opinion that the workmanship was of greater quality than that of the competition in Beirut and other places. The minesweepers were built of wood: the frame was built of eucalyptus wood and it was coated in pine. The ships were each approximately forty meters in length and their width was six meters. Each ship was outfitted with a five-hundred-horsepower primary diesel engine, an auxiliary engine, and two generators to refill the batteries, which supplied the current to the long, thick cable that trailed the ship while it was minesweeping. See “Building Minesweepers in the Tel Aviv Port” [in Hebrew], Yam, April–May 1946, 8 – 9. The Marine Trust saw the building of the minesweepers for the British navy as its crowning glory in 1944. See Marine Trust Limited, eighth annual report of the board of directors for 1944 [in Hebrew], S30/4629, CZA, Jerusalem.  “The Tel Aviv Port’s Service for the War Effort” [in Hebrew], Davar, December 11, 1944, 4; “Salvage Service” [in Hebrew], Yam, April – May 1946, 9; H. Zuckerman, “From War to Peace” [in Hebrew], Yam, April – May 1946, 6.  N. Wydra, Land of Israel maritime transportation [in Hebrew], 24 September 1946, S74/56, CZA, Jerusalem; N. Wydra, speech given at the Seafarer’s House, 21 May 1945, S74/56, CZA, Jerusalem.

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paid with their lives, and most of the Yishuv’s ships that were used in the war did not return—eight boats and twelve sailing ships sank during the war, constituting some 75 percent of the total capacity of Jewish shipping.³⁰ Three factors were noticeable in the mobilization of Palestine’s Jews to the Royal Navy during the war: the Yishuv leadership, which supported enlistment based on national motivations, viewing it as an opportunity to promote and develop the Yishuv’s maritime and other military abilities; the kibbutzim, which were established along the coast and aspired to develop the sea professions for the sake of the experience that would be garnered in naval service; and the youth, who enlisted in the navy due to national, personal, or other motivations.³¹ The navy’s authorities were none too pleased with the prospect of placing volunteers on ships; they preferred to assign them to the fleet’s auxiliary services, in jobs traditionally designated for “natives”—in the navy’s maintenance facilities at the port as craftsmen in various professions, in loading and unloading at the ports, in guard duty, and in coastal reconnaissance.³² The official reason given for the Jewish volunteers’ assignments in these jobs was that training them to serve on the large warships would be expensive and time-consuming; it would require sending them to training bases outside of the Middle East; and it was doubtful that they would complete their training in time to contribute to the war effort.³³ Moreover, near the end of the war, the British fear of

 N. Wydra, “Ha-Taḥbura ha-Yamit ha-Eretsyiśraelit,” undated (most likely from the second half of 1946), S74/57, CZA, Jerusalem; S. Kinarsali, “British Shipping toward the Future” [in Hebrew], Yam, November 1945, 4; Bar-Kochba Meirovitz, “Summary of a Period in Jewish Maritime Enterprises” [in Hebrew], Yam, October–November 1946, 8; correspondence about the British navy’s expropriation of motorboats during the war: M-58/4338, ISA, Jerusalem; M-62/4338, ISA, Jerusalem.  Gelber, Volunteering, 58 – 75; Hayam, Ships’ Tales, 205 – 6. For more on the different motivations driving members of the Yishuv to volunteer for the Royal Navy and the obstacles that prevented others from doing so during the war, see Lissak, Shapira, and Cohen, Jewish Community, 425 – 28.  For example, in late 1940, a company was formed at the Tel Aviv port for port operations. After a few months of training at the port, it was transferred to Tobruk and ultimately absorbed in the ground forces’ engineer corps; Gelber, Volunteering, 59. For more on not being recruited for ships and serving as different types of craftsmen in the navy’s ports in the Land of Israel and abroad, see the accounts of Yehuda Ingra, Yehuda Benron, and Yehoshua Lahav: Yehuda Ingra, interview [in Hebrew], 1 March 1994, HI, Haifa; Yehuda Benron, interview [in Hebrew], 30 January 1994, HI, Haifa; Yehoshua Lahav, interview [in Hebrew], 5 September 1993, HI, Haifa.  Gelber, Volunteering, 58, 71.

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the renewal of illegal immigration grew, and the navy was loath to reinforce the Yishuv’s nautical abilities.³⁴ Official enlistment in the navy began in November 1942, and within eighteen months 1,154 Jews were called up, including 14 officers and 1,140 non-commissioned officers—but few served on warships at sea. The officers were all engineers who served at the navy’s maintenance facilities on the Mediterranean Sea; there were also mechanics, welders, deck hands, wireless operators, carpenters, drivers, stockkeepers, cooks, waiters, administrative workers, and others. Most of the navy’s volunteers were discharged in the summer and autumn of 1945.³⁵ One of the pronounced social difficulties in the navy was the dispersion of Jewish volunteers from the Land of Israel; there were no more than two or three people on a ship or in other locations because they were recruited for jobs that needed a relatively small number of professionals. Only a few places —Alexandria, Port Said, and Haifa—had greater concentrations of Jewish recruits.³⁶

Fishery in the Land of Israel during the Second World War As noted in the previous chapter, fish consumption in Palestine on the eve of the Second World War in 1939 was 1,816 tons, of which the Yishuv supplied a mere 67 tons (3.7 percent), constituting 5 percent of the fish market in Palestine pounds. Arab fishery ruled the sector and supplied the majority, some 82 percent of the amount fished and of monetary value; Italian fishery constituted the remainder of the market, with between 13 and 15 percent. The year 1939 was the first year of pond fishing, but its contribution to Jewish fishery was still insignificant: lake fishing made up 40 tons (60 percent), deepwater fishing was 19 tons

 Ibid., 72, 74. The British fear was, in retrospect, justified. Near the end of the war, the Mossad LeAliyah Bet and Shai (Sherut Yediot, the Haganah’s intelligence arm) showed a great interest in the navy’s volunteers, who could aid them in illegal immigration activities; many did indeed answer the call, as we will see in the next chapter.  Ibid., 74– 75. All in all, some thirty-five thousand people from the Yishuv enlisted in different armies during the war, thirty thousand of them in the British army. An additional six thousand or so enlisted to the Notrim (Jewish police force) and the Palmach; Lissak, Shapira, and Cohen, Jewish Community, 425.  Zeev Hayam, “Our Recruits to the Navy Have Returned Home” [in Hebrew], Yam, June 1946, 4– 6. For more on the atmosphere among Jewish recruits in the navy, see Rabinowitz, “Jewish Jack Tars”; Rosser, “Yarn of a Coy,” 147– 49.

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(28 percent), coastal fishing was 7 tons (10 percent), and fish breeding in ponds was 0.8 tons, a mere 1 percent of Jewish fishing that year.³⁷ But in contrast with shipping, whose development was frozen with the war’s outbreak, the relatively new Jewish fishery sector was able to expand specifically in the war years in all sectors: sea fishery, lake fishery, and especially fish farming. The central factors included a dearth of fish due to Italian fishing boats not being allowed to sail along the coast from 1942 and the cessation of fish import into Palestine as well as the great growth of fish consumption due to the British military’s encampment in Palestine. In this new reality, in which the demand was greater than the existing supply, private individuals and various agents began to flock to the fishery sector, realizing that much profit could be made in the heretofore unexplored industry.³⁸ The growth and expansion in Jewish fishery was apparent from the beginning of the war; in 1940 Jewish fishery nearly tripled (182 tons) relative to the previous year. This amount almost tripled the relative proportion of Jewish fishery, which reached 9.2 percent of the overall fishery in Palestine that year. The internal division of types of Jewish fishing indicates a rise in the relative proportion of pond fishing, in which the largest growth is evident; it reached 11 percent of all Jewish fishery, compared to 1 percent of Jewish fishery in the previous year.³⁹ The growth trend in the Jewish fishery industry would continue throughout the war and the years that followed, and the relative proportion of Jewish fishery within general fishery in Palestine would also continually increase. The primary reason behind this was the high

 N. Wydra, “Development of Jewish Fishing” [in Hebrew], Yam, April–May 1946, 12– 14; Tsur, Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 2:130.  This was apparent in the growing number of trawlers on the coast of the Land of Israel. At the end of the war, eighteen Jewish trawlers, six of them belonging to Nahshon, and eighteen Arab trawlers were reported to be working on the country’s shores; N. Wydra, “Jewish Fishery” [in Hebrew], Yam, July 1945, 4– 6. Private Jewish ships, it was reported, were mostly old, without appropriate equipment or trained manpower to work at sea, and they sank or were removed from service; at the end of the war, there was nearly no trace of them left. See Schmida, “History of Fishing,” 18; Tsur, Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 2:130.  H. Yaari, secretary of the fisheries division, the yield of the Land of Israel’s fishery and its sources, 1939 – 1946 [in Hebrew], 25 November 1947, S74/118, CZA, Jerusalem; Tsur, Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 1:346, appendix 1, 2:132. The central reason for the high growth rate of fish breeding was the expected profitability for this type of breeding, as was clear in the first year of commercial breeding. In 1940, the average revenue for a ton of fish from coastal fishing was the lowest, at forty-three Palestine pounds; deepwater fishing was forty-eight pounds for a ton; lake fishing was fifty-six pounds for a ton of fish, and the income for a ton of pond-bred fish was 150 pounds, three times each of the other types of fishing.

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growth rate of pond breeding, a trend that would also affect the internal division of the Yishuv’s fishery sources, as we will see later on.

Fish Farming (Pisciculture) Lake and sea fishing, the two central forms of fishery customary in Palestine in the twenties and thirties, were joined by a third form in the late thirties: fish farming. In order for fish farming to be profitable, flowing water and a natural valley that could easily be closed off were necessary; alternatively, a pond could be built, surrounded by dirt embankments. In Palestine, certain regions were found to have a water temperature that was ideal for the breeding of carp. In order to put the plan into action, initiative, knowledge, and capital had to be brought together to sustain the industry in suitable locations.⁴⁰ The first to establish a fish breeding pond in the Land of Israel was Mordechai Schwartz, a student at the Mikveh Israel school. Schwartz, whose family worked in the fish trade in Vienna, brought the first carp to breed in an irrigation pool in the school’s orchard in 1926. Schwartz’s initiative was short-lived, as the British forbade the digging of another pond for the laying of eggs for reproduction; they were concerned that it would bring more mosquitoes and malaria. With the exception of Schwartz’s pond at Mikveh Israel, which was the only pond actually created, no the other plans were realized until the mid-thirties.⁴¹ The second attempt to breed fish in the Land of Israel was made by Branco Zitzer, who came to the Land of Israel from Zagreb, Yugoslavia, in 1932; his family had fish-breeding ponds in Zagreb. He surveyed the land for a number of months, seeking a suitable location, and finally settled on the Kurdani (Ein Afek) springs in the Zebulun Valley as the best fit. In March 1933, the JNF leased him a 106-dunam plot at that location.⁴² In the first year, Zitzer focused on cleaning and preparing the land; afterwards, he traveled to Yugoslavia, bringing back three thousand carp, which were placed in the ponds and developed nicely. The next step was to bring the females from Hungary for the purposes of breeding. The placement of the females in special fish-breeding ponds in mid-April 1934

 The description of the development of the fish farming sector relies in large part on Amnon Loya’s detailed works on the subject: Loya, “Branco Zitzer”; Loya, “Fisheries Industry.”  Avitsur, Inventors and Adaptors, 102– 6; Loya, “Branco Zitzer,” 75 – 80. The different attempts did not come to fruition at the time due to problems finding open territory, a lack of knowledge in the field of pisciculture, and a dearth of funds.  Based on the concentrations of chlorine in the Kurdani springs, which was found to be suitable for fish farming. See Loya, “Branco Zitzer,” 80 – 81.

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was a great success and for more than two years the place functioned on a commercial scale. The British supported the process by not collecting all of the taxes on the fish; this stemmed from a desire to help the land’s economy and to try to free the land from the import of fish and meat. But the success was not to last; in 1936 the enterprise was liquidated. This was primarily due to loans that Zitzer had taken, which were not covered by the profits; it was also related to the rioting that broke out that year—the Kurdani was entirely isolated from the Yishuv’s residential centers at the time, affecting income.⁴³ Wydra claimed that Zitzer’s professional and commercial abilities were the primary reason behind its failure.⁴⁴ A later, more balanced assessment viewed Zitzer as a fish-farming pioneer in the Land of Israel. While he may not have been financially successful—in part because he was a private entrepreneur and did not receive financial aid from the settling institutions or loans from the British, as did the kibbutzim that bred fish in later years—his enterprise constituted the inception of the fish farming sector. It proved for the first time that carp was well-suited to the land’s climate and that the feasibility of the industry should be evaluated in other places as well.⁴⁵ Tel Amal, also known as Nir David, was the first Tower and Stockade (1936 – 1939) settlement and a pioneer in settlement pisciculture. It was founded in the western Beit Shean valley, on the border of the Jezreel Valley, on JNF land and using Keren Hayesod funds.⁴⁶ The group members sought sources of livelihood and two of the founding members, Shimon Tal (Milak) and Zechariah Moser, brought up the idea of breeding carp, exploiting the nearby Asi River. The two contacted the Maritime Department, which sent instructor Yaacov Katz, a net merchant who was a member of the governmental committee for fish breeding in Germany, for training and the establishment of an enclosed pond within the Asi. These were the days of rioting and the eve of the outbreak of the Second World War; the Yishuv and its leadership were painfully aware of the Land of Israel’s isolation from the world, and many efforts were invested in amplifying local production of food in order to ensure that the Yishuv would not have to rely on import.⁴⁷ Craig Bennett, the chief fisheries officer for the government, visited Tel Amal on November 17, 1937 and found that with a small financial investment and proper organization the stream could succeed as a carp-breeding en-

  26.   

For more on the events at the enterprise at the Kurdani, see Loya, “Branco Zitzer,” 82– 89. Loya, “Branco Zitzer,” 89 – 90; Wydra, “Fishing Methods,” in Hanoch, Fishing Settlements, Loya, “Branco Zitzer,” 94. Oren, Settlement, 21– 22. Tal, “Forty Years”; Eshel, Forty Years, 4, 7.

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terprise.⁴⁸ The Maritime Department also supported the idea at the time, viewing it as a good opportunity to garner experience in fish farming.⁴⁹ Surveys of the amount of oxygen in the Asi’s waters in December 1937 indeed showed that it was sufficient for carp breeding.⁵⁰ The first attempt saw one thousand carps brought to the Asi from the Kurdani, where they were placed in an eight-dunam enclosed area; the carps’ weight increased. Those involved were certain that carp was the best suited for farming in the ponds, although the final tally of the attempt showed a financial loss. The sources of knowledge on the subject were in Europe, and Yugoslavia specifically, where the fish-breeding sector was extensive in scope. In early 1939, Shimon Tal (Milak) went there, with the aid of a scholarship from the Jewish Agency, in order to learn the secrets of fish farming.⁵¹ Following the first attempts, a decision was made to continue developing the enterprise; the ponds’ area was to be expanded to one hundred dunams. Funds for the expansion came from Dr. D. Loewinger, owner of the fish breeding training farm in Yugoslavia where Tal learned, who showed great interest in the plans being made in Nir David and offered concrete assistance in establishing the industry in the Land of Israel. Loewinger sent his engineer, Prof. Ivenchich, who located the land for the ponds and adapted a detailed plan for their construction.⁵² In the summer of 1939 the earthwork began, and the Palestine Fish Breeding Co., jointly owned by the members of Kibbutz Nir David and the Jewish Agency, was formed. The Jewish Agency purchased shares in the amount of 500 Palestine pounds, but took on no responsibility for the enterprise’s management. The company combined private capital with a labor settlement kibbutz, and the Jewish Agency played its part as a national settlement institution in lending its support. It appears that at this point the Jewish Agency did not wish to be a mere bystander; it chose, despite the difficulty of mixing national capital and private capital in a joint venture, to act with caution and involve itself with some degree of control in the process of forming the enterprise and the pos-

 B.-K. Meirovitz to Y. Gruenbaum, report from visit of the government’s chief fisheries officer at Lake Kinneret, Hula, and Tel Amal on November 16 – 17, 1937, Tel Aviv [in Hebrew], 25 November 1937, S53/1339/2, CZA, Jerusalem.  B.-K. Meirovitz, Tel Aviv, to N. Wydra [in Hebrew], 9 January 1938, S53/1339/2, CZA, Jerusalem.  Y. Gasnov, Haifa, survey of the Asi waters for oxygen levels [in Hebrew], December 1937, S53/ 1339/2, CZA, Jerusalem.  For details on the shortcomings and lessons from the first attempt at carp breeding in the Asi, see Loya, “Fisheries Industry,” 79 – 81.  Tal, “Forty Years.”

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sibilities for future development.⁵³ In practice, the Maritime Department helped all of the farms later on with the planning and surveys necessary for the establishment of the ponds, gave counsel on breeding methods, and helped them attain the necessary loans.⁵⁴ The ponds at Nir David, whose surface area had meanwhile expanded to 250 dunams, were filled with water in early February 1940 and some twenty thousand small carp, the outcome of an egg-laying at the site, were inserted.⁵⁵ A number of months of breeding made it clear that the process was going well and that the net profits per dunam were excellent—convincing the Jewish Agency that the sector was a profitable one and that breeding could be further developed.⁵⁶ The success of fish farming in Nir David led other kibbutzim to create their own ponds. The phenomenon was pronounced in the Beit Shean Valley and in the Hula Valley, thanks to the soil’s salinity, the water’s salinity, and the unique climate conditions.⁵⁷ One important factor in the sector’s success was the government, which supported it from its inception, viewing it as key for amplifying food production during the war; the fish farming industry was considered an important source of protein. However, the government conditioned the supply of water to the ponds on the submission of a detailed plan for each proposal, with a map attached.⁵⁸ Fish farming was essential not just because of its supply of important protein-rich food, but also because it made use of swampy, lime, and saline cistern areas as well as of saltwater, which at the time were not found suitable for any

 Loya, “Fisheries Industry,” 83.  B.-K. Meirovitz, summary of the Maritime Department’s activity in 1942– 1943 [in Hebrew], undated, S105/5, CZA, Jerusalem.  Wydra, press release about the fish-breeding industry in Nir David, Haifa [in Hebrew], 14 February 1940, S9/1572, CZA, Jerusalem; Wydra to Meirovitz, Haifa [in Hebrew], 18 October 1940, S9/ 1572, CZA, Jerusalem.  In mid-1941, after six or seven months of fish farming, it emerged that the net profit stood at 5,184 Palestine pounds per dunam—a profit that was at the time far beyond any other type of catch of fish or agricultural industry. B.-K. Meirovitz to David Horovitz [in Hebrew], 15 October 1941, S53/1339, CZA, Jerusalem.  On the unique conditions for fish farming in these two locations, see Nir, Beit Shean Valley, 86, 145, 170 – 72; Biger and Ben-Artzi, “Settlement Landscape,” 446; Weitz, Settlement Activities, 28 – 46.  For more on the British approach to the fish farming industry and the enactment of legislation on the subject as well as on a number of central problems that accompanied the founding of the ponds—including rights to the water, complaints on the part of the Arabs, malaria, fish diseases, fertilizer, water seepage, and flooding in the areas near the ponds as well as the different solutions that were found over the years—see Loya, “Fisheries Industry,” 90 – 109.

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other agricultural growth.⁵⁹ One of the main factors inspiring the kibbutzim to enter the fish-farming business was the instructor Katz, who was devoted to the idea, traveling from kibbutz to kibbutz and doing all he could to aid and encourage the fish farmers.⁶⁰ In the climate at the time, the lack of fish and the price increase led agricultural farms to great enthusiasm about developing fish farming, both because of the expected profitability and because it was well suited to their way of life. Fish farming did not demand that they leave the farm; in sea fishing, fishermen were away from their homes and farms for long periods and had to adopt a way of life that did not accord with the lifestyle and spirit of cooperative settlement. Moreover, the settlement institutions’ support of the fish farming industry stemmed not just from its financial promise; it was also due to the fact that “a new and refreshing tone was added to the land’s barren landscape, changing the harmful swamps and the saline soil to a source of blessing and grace. The building of the ponds created a sense of rejecting the surrounding desolation: the blue appearance of the water in the ponds against the backdrop of the yellows and browns that reigned in the landscape around, especially in the summer months, induced a calm atmosphere in the hot and dry climate, bearing tidings for the future.”⁶¹ Table 4.1. Fish Ponds in the Beit Shean Valley, 1939 – 1948⁶² Year

Area (dunams)

Produce (tons)

Average annual crop (kg per dunam)

         

    , , , , , ,

.         

         

   

Wydra, “Programme for Fisheries,” 107– 10. As attested by Wydra in Eshel, Forty Years, 15. Eshel, Forty Years, 12. Loya, “Fisheries Industry,” 95 and sources of the table there.

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Table 4.2. Fish Ponds in the Hula Valley, 1941 – 1948⁶³ Year

Area (dunams)

Produce (tons)

Average annual crop (kg per dunam)

       

   , , , , ,

       

       

Area (dunams)

Produce (tons)

Average annual crop (kg per dunam)

  , , , , , , ,

.      , , , ,

       

Table 4.3. Jewish Fish Farming, 1939 – 1948⁶⁴ Year          

An analysis of the data on the area of fish ponds in the Beit Shean Valley and the Hula Valley shows that these two locations saw a general increase over the years in fish pond enterprises. The great leap that took place between 1942 and 1945 is particularly pronounced; the area of the ponds in the two places grew more than threefold. A certain gap is noticeable when examining the average kilograms per dunam per year, with the Beit Shean Valley kibbutzim consistently showing higher yields. So, for example, in 1948 the Beit Shean Valley produced 168 kilograms per dunam on average, in contrast with the 158 in the Hula Valley. In both locations, an examination shows growth in average annual yield  Ibid., 126.  Ibid., 138, as well as updates to the table given to me by the author.

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per dunam in kilograms, from which we can deduce that with time and experience the farmers were able to produce a greater yield from the growth itself. The Beit Shean Valley kibbutzim also led the charge in the establishment of the Fish Farmers Association, which contributed greatly to the crystallizing sector on the kibbutzim. From its inception, it became clear that with no professional knowledge and no studies, the sector could not possibly develop; the organization took upon itself consulting and instructing the farms in everything related to establishing new ponds. The first fish farmers’ course was held in 1942 at Kibbutz Nir David.⁶⁵ The organization published a journal in which it supplied professional information. The association also provided loans and consulted on the purchase and import of fish food, fish market regulation, and marketing—especially with Tnuva, which sold the fish at local markets. Tnuva was a cooperative for the marketing of agricultural products, and it was essential to the fish farmers, because the fish needed to either be sold immediately or stored under refrigerated conditions. Tnuva established special facilities in the large Yishuv centers for receiving the sea and pond fish and distributed them among the fish merchants in each settlement.⁶⁶ In 1942, the need to ground the entire industry in science grew, and the Maritime Department established a test pond for fish farming next to Sde Nahum. The purpose of the testing was to increase the ponds’ yield, and among other things attempts were made at selective breeding of the carp. In partnership with the Technion’s hydrological laboratory, different types of soil and their water seepage were studied.⁶⁷ An assessment conducted for the Jewish fishing industry in the middle of the war (1942) indicated that Jewish fishery that year reached 484 tons, or 21.6 percent of general fishery in the land—that is, the proportion of Jewish fishery within general fishery had grown by roughly two and one third over the course of two years. This was in no small part due to the fact that the relative proportion of fish farming within Jewish fishery had grown tenfold, reaching 45 percent of total Jewish fishery, as opposed to lake and sea fishery, which had not grown to the same extent and comprised only 55 percent of total fishery at the time.⁶⁸ A summary of general fishery in Palestine and Jewish fishery in particular during the war years raises a number of points: the Jewish Palestinian fishery yield increased by a factor of two and one third during the period; Jewish fishery was the prime cause for the growth of the general fishery industry; in 1939, the  Ben-Aharon, “Fish Farmers.”  Gurevitch and Graetz, Jewish Agricultural Settlement, 93; Malbin, “Marketing.”  Bar-Kochba Meirovitz, “Summary of a Period in Jewish Maritime Enterprises” [in Hebrew], Yam, October–November 1946, 6 – 10.  B.-K. Meirovitz, “Jewish Fishery,” in Hanoch, Fishing Settlements.

       

       

Tsur, Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 2:132.

a)

Jewish

General

Year

       

Lake Fishery

Type

. % . % . % . % . % . % . % . %

% Jewish , , , , , , , ,

General        

Jewish

Sea Fishery

. % . % . % . % . % . % . % . %

% Jewish .      ,

Jewish

Fish Breeding

Table 4.4. The Development of Types of Jewish Fishery Relative to General Fishery in Tons, 1938 – 1945a)

, , , , , , , ,

General       , ,

Jewish

Total

. % . % . % . % . % . % . % . %

% Jewish

Fishery in the Land of Israel during the Second World War

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total Jewish yield was 66 tons, comprising 3.6 percent of the general product, while in 1945 it reached 1,835 tons, or 43.5 percent of the general yield; the fish farming industry dominated Jewish fishery, constituting two thirds of the total produce in the various fishery sectors at the end of the war.⁶⁹ By the end of the war, fish ponds had been established at forty-one farms on an area of seven thousand dunams.⁷⁰ In 1946 there were eight thousand dunams of ponds that yielded some twelve hundred tons of fish each year. Of these, 80 percent belonged to fishermen from the Kibbutz Movement’s HaKibbutz HaMeuhad, and 20 percent were privately owned.⁷¹ By 1948, fish farming had continued to grow quickly; the area was comprised of thirteen thousand dunams in sixty farms, the majority belonging to settlement bodies rather than private initiative.⁷² This was the result of a clear policy on the part of the Yishuv institutions, which in the ten years prior to the state’s founding had supported the fisheries sector, seeing in it, as noted, a source for independent supply and a sector that was important for the Yishuv, both during peacetime and in times of siege. In contrast, for the fishing settlements, which did not receive large-scale institutional aid at the time, and which relied in no small part on sea and lake fishing, the situation was entirely different.⁷³

 N. Wydra, “Development of Jewish Fishing” [in Hebrew], Yam, April–May 1946, 12– 14. It should be noted that the value of Jewish fishery in Palestine pounds reached 54 percent of the general value—that is to say, Jewish fishery was the majority of the market in financial value, primarily because of the carp, which had a high monetary value. The relative value of Jewish fishery continued to grow; in 1946, profits from Jewish fishery constituted 59 percent of the overall value of income from fishery. For more, see H. Yaari, secretary of the Fisheries Department, profits from Jewish fishery in the Land of Israel and its sources, 1939 – 1946 [in Hebrew], 25 November 1947, S74/118, CZA, Jerusalem.  Wydra, “Programme for Fisheries,” 107– 10.  Loya, “Fisheries Industry,” 102. For more on the subject, see Tsur, “Sea Conquest.”  “Sḳira Tamtsitit shel Matsav Anafei ha-Dayig ha-Ivri ṿe-Tsarkhei Pituaḥ,” Ministry of Agriculture Fisheries Division, 26 July 1948, pp. 1– 9, S15/9565, CZA, Jerusalem.  Jewish sea and lake fishing may have grown during the war, but the profits were low: sea fishery rose from 1,517 tons in 1939 to 2,464 in 1945, of which Jewish fishery rose from 20 to 448 tons—21 times what it had been, while Arab fishery rose by only a third. The proportion of Jewish sea fishing during the war rose from 1.33 at the beginning of the war to 18.5 percent at its end. The total lake fishery grew from 298 tons in 1939 to 506 tons in 1945—an increase of two thirds. The proportion of Jewish fishery in total fishery doubled, from 46 tons at the beginning of the war (15 percent of lake fishing) to 140 tons at its end (28 percent of lake fishery). The doubling of the lakes’ yield during the war was possible in large part thanks to improved fishing methods of the fishing settlements in Lake Kinneret and the Hula Lake. See Bar-Kochba Meirovitz, “Summary of a Period in Jewish Maritime Enterprises” [in Hebrew], Yam, October – Novemmber 1946, 6.

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Fishing Settlements during the Second World War The fishing settlements that took shape in the Land of Israel during the war were primarily situated on lakes—Hulata at the Hula Lake and Ein Gev and Ginosar by Lake Kinneret. These were places in which maritime activity had begun before the war; for several years dozens of members had consistently worked in fishing, gradually grounding their settlement. This was not the case with locations on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea. The fishing settlements in some senses fell between the cracks during the war; the first had been founded before the war began but lacked sufficient experience at sea, the Settlement Division had no organized plan for purchasing land on the shores, and where there was national land, it was not designated for seaside settlements. The division was also unaware of the unique needs this type of settlement engendered and did not concern itself with the development of the seaside locations, claiming that fishery did not fall under its auspices. The shores, which did not have many places that were well-suited for anchorages, needed to be prepared, which required a great financial investment—and this deterred the settling institutions.⁷⁴ Nahshon, which was a Histadrut company, claimed that it was a company for all intents and purposes and must pay dividends to its investors. It saw itself as a complementary body for national capital, and abstained from giving direct and consistent support to the settlements themselves. The lack of recognition of the fishing settlements—as opposed to the agricultural settlements—was expressed in Nahshon’s management of the trawlers, which placed a burden on the fishing settlements: Nahshon employed the kibbutz members at first as salaried fishermen on the boats for a percentage of the income from the fish, claiming that only on the basis of regular business transactions could it pay dividends to its shareholders. But the revenues that remained for the fishermen were always low, and averted losses to the farms. The kibbutzim demanded that Nahshon transfer the boats to them as a lease, and that the seafaring be run by them as independent farms, as in agriculture and industry; they claimed that an independent worker, responsible for running his own farm, always had an advantage. Toward the end of the war, Nahshon agreed to transfer the boats to the bodies working in fishery.⁷⁵ For the fishing settlements, which could not invest

 Tsur, “A Task and Its Realization,” in Hanoch, Fishing Settlements, 38 – 41; Maharshek, “A Budget for Fishing Villages,” in Hanoch, Fishing Settlements.  Tsur, Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 2:130 – 36. Nahshon’s willingness to transfer the boats to the charge of the settlements resulted primarily from financial considerations. Nahshon agreed to transfer the boats whose revenues were low, below the minimum for a day’s work—for example, the Snapir, which was given to Plugat HaYam in order to minimize losses. However, in the case of

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what was necessary to develop the industry and upgrade the trawlers, the war was a time of terrible crisis. Most of the farms established along the Mediterranean coast suffered from depleted manpower—primarily because of enlistment in the navy and the cessation of immigration at the time—and abandoned fishery during the forties. Sdot Yam was the only farm along the Mediterranean coast in which fishery continued until the end of the British Mandate period.

Plugat HaYam—Mishmar HaYam One of the farms that ceased fishing in the forties was Mishmar HaYam (previously Plugat HaYam). The settlement’s founding in May 1939 was accompanied by new plans to expand fishing, and more boats were purchased. The company absorbed a group of immigrants from HeHalutz in Poland who had been trained to fish in Gdynia. Their arrival was significant for the sector’s advancement and for worker unity. Fishing methods improved, and the settlement also received aid from other fishermen—some from Yugoslavia, some local Arabs. The sea farm employed two motorboats in various types of coastal fishing, with some twenty people working on board. A number of female members wove nets; they were responsible for creating most of the new nets as well as for net repair.⁷⁶ With the help of the Jewish Agency and HaKibbutz HaMeuhad, the settlements founded a shipyard in 1942, where they built fishing boats, including the Caesarea, made for Kibbutz Sdot Yam.⁷⁷ However, with time it became clear that the location was not suited for the establishment of a large marine farm. One of the dunes near the shore, slated for the establishment of the sea farm and the shipyard, needed more investment than had been planned, and further surveys conducted late in 1941 showed that it would be impossible to build an anchorage there. To the east, the good agricultural land had been divided between other kibbutzim and another plot of land was seized by the British for military purposes. The group members were offered a different location, east of the Tel Kurdani springs, a place where the JNF had good land for farming. The group moved to the new location on September 18, 1946, changed its name to Afek, and ceased to be a maritime settlement—

more profitable boats, such as Nakdimon and Ne’eman, Nahshon continued to demand joint management.  A. C., “Road from the Port,” in Hanoch, Fishing Settlements.  Helpern, Revival, 305.

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after eleven years in existence, four of them as Plugat HaYam in Kiryat Haim and seven of them at Mishmar HaYam.⁷⁸

The Gordonia-Maapilim Group A similar fate awaited the Gordonia-Maapilim group in Atlit, which, as noted earlier, moved to its land in May 1939. According to the original plan, twelve of its members were meant to work in coastal fishery, and ten others were in hired work and in the auxiliary farm—chicken coop, cowshed, and vegetable garden. The total number of group members was set at roughly fifty.⁷⁹ After initial attempts and the hardships that accompanied them, the group members progressed to methods that were accepted at the time in the land, aided by the experience of Arab fishermen. The initial results were satisfactory, especially in sardine-fishing, and they saw success in smoking sardines as well.⁸⁰ However, meantime the Second World War broke out; light fishing was forbidden and fishery was limited as a result of the state of emergency on the shores of the Mediterranean. Over its first two years, the group underwent a great crisis. Its entire existence at the location was called into doubt, and the group increased pressure on the institutions to give it a trawler. Through Nahshon, the group purchased the Nun, a thirty-three-ton wooden boat for deepwater fishing, in 1942; in 1943 it bought the wooden boat Nissan, which was fifty-six tons. Eight or nine members worked on board each.⁸¹ However, it was not long— near the end of the war, in fact—before it became clear that this type of fishing could not support the fishermen. Running the boats meant many expenses, primarily because faults were found in the motors of both boats, leading to lost workdays; this affected the farm’s financial balance. Moreover, with no pier, costs grew. The fish caught had to be unloaded at the Tel Aviv port; boats had to anchor in the Haifa Port. This reality exacerbated the existing social problem—the prolonged absence from home that work at sea required. After years of attempts, the fishermen—bitterly disappointed—abandoned fishery.⁸²

 Tsur, Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 2:77– 79; Porat, Fishery Pioneers, 102– 3.  B.-K. Meirovitz to E. Kaplan [in Hebrew], 8 December 1943, S74/260, CZA, Jerusalem.  Ephraim, “The Fishing Affair in the Maapilim Group,” in Hanoch, Fishing Settlements, 105.  Y. P., “On Fishing Settlements—The Gordonia-Maapilim Group in Atlit” [in Hebrew], Yam, November 1945, 10.  From members, “In the Gordonia-Maapilim Group in Atlit” [in Hebrew], Yam, October – Noovember 1946, 20; Porat, Fishery Pioneers, 113.

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Sdot Yam Kibbutz Sdot Yam was born within Plugat HaYam and drew its vision of conquest of the port and fishery from it; to a great degree, it represented the ultimate fishing settlement along the coast of the Mediterranean Sea during the Mandate period. It began with HaNoar HaOved, which elected to establish a group at the widely attended assembly that took place on the Carmel on the Sukkot holiday in 1935 (known as Maḥaneh ha-Elef). Ben-Gurion’s call to the youth to undertake the conquest of the sea a few years earlier still echoed in their ears. HaNoar HaOved’s leadership supported it, calling on its members in training programs to adopt his ideas. The group consisted of twenty-five members, seventeenand eighteen-year-olds from HaNoar HaOved, hailing from Ein Harod and Na’an, who met with the Plugat HaYam members and integrated with them in the early days of the 1936 riots. The group members settled on Plugat HaYam’s land, between Kiryat Haim and Kiryat Motzkin, and for the most part worked at the Haifa port, primarily in porterage and stevedoreship. The group members also began to work in trawling, and were trained aboard Plugat HaYam’s Bikhora and Snapir. ⁸³ The group members began to work aboard the Rahaf, Nahshon’s cargo ship, too; they may not have learned fishing there, but they gained experience running trawlers. The Rahaf’s trip to Cyprus in late December 1938, as noted, ended in tragedy; it shattered on the rocks on the southern coast of the island, and two of the crew, Gidon Rosenthal and Gershon Erlich, were killed.⁸⁴ One month earlier, the group’s first independent fishing enterprise began when Nahshon transferred responsibility for the Peled to it and eight of its members began to work on board.⁸⁵ But very quickly the problems with the Peled emerged. There were no spare parts and it appears that the relationship with Nahshon was on shaky ground; it did not supply solutions.⁸⁶ At the same time, overtures began to find a location for a permanent settlement on the coast, and soon negotiations with PICA (Palestine Jewish Colonization Association) to settle in Caesarea began via the Yishuv institutions. However, with the outbreak of the Sec-

 See Megged in Caesarea, 52– 61.  Tsur, Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 1:262– 63. The sinking of the Rahaf and the death of two of Sdot Yam’s members was a harsh blow to the group. See Caesarea, 141– 48. For more on this see chapter 3 in this volume, note 215.  Sdot Yam Bulletin [in Hebrew] 48, November 4, 1938.  Sdot Yam Bulletin [in Hebrew] 51, December 21, 1938; Sdot Yam Bulletin [in Hebrew] 73, November 17, 1939; Sdot Yam Bulletin [in Hebrew] 83, June 7, 1940.

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ond World War, the processes were suspended and Sdot Yam remained in Kiryat Binyamin.⁸⁷ Mid-1940 saw a decision to move a group of Sdot Yam members to Caesarea for reasons of politics and defense; a settlement was necessary at the location. This was done over the objections of PICA, which held the land, objections that could not be overcome by the Agricultural Center and the Jewish Agency’s Political Department. Ben-Gurion noted two central reasons for the urgent need for a Jewish presence in Caesarea: (1) during the 1936 – 1939 rioting, gangs of Arabs infiltrated the land through the Caesarea port and even smuggled in weapons; (2) there was no Jewish presence between Atlit and Netanya on the sea; in order to bring in more illegal immigrants, there was a need for more points along the coast. PICA rejected the idea; it had a city planned at that location, and was concerned that the proposed settlement would derail its plans.⁸⁸ On May 2, 1940, a number of the group’s members settled on the Caesarea coast, without PICA’s agreement and before the location had been properly prepared. They began to develop maritime sectors under the training of Arab fishermen from Caesarea.⁸⁹ The Caesarea group’s situation was far from simple and the limitations imposed by the war severely damaged their fishing activity. In early 1940, light fishing was banned; in June 1941, the navy requisitioned the Peled, and Sdot Yam was left with no trawler of its own. At the time, the group in Caesarea had thirty-five members, and their financial situation became dire. The group was aided by income from its members who remained in Kiryat Binyamin; work at the Haifa port was considered the movement’s mission, and most of the income for the group came from there. The group made additional efforts to subsist at the place and its members began to work in netting, supplying gravel, and

 Porat, Fishery Pioneers, 72– 73; Tsur, Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 1:169. In 1937, roughly one year after the group settled within Plugat HaYam, the Sdot Yam group moved to an independent encampment near the train tracks. On the subject, see Yonatan Baharav’s account in Meir, Field and Sea, 16.  See Moshe Ne’eman’s account of the meeting with Ben-Gurion about Sdot Yam’s move to Caesarea, in Ben-Tzvi, Sdot Yam, 6 – 7.  The settlement was planned for 1939 but pushed off due to financial hardship and negotiations with PICA, which could not come to terms with permanent settlement on its land. Baron Rothschild had already tried to purchase the bay in Caesarea. Later on, the place would serve as a point aiding illegal immigration and as a base for the Palmach’s sea company, Palyam, as we will see in the fifth chapter. See Oren, Settlement, 104. The transfer of a number of settlers to Caesarea before it was sufficiently prepared to serve as a source of income occurred because of the objections to settle the place, “if there are people there, we will establish the basis for existence and overcome”; see Yehuda, “The Tenth-Anniversary Celebration” [in Hebrew], Yam, October–November 1946, 20.

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hosting maritime courses that took place under the auspices of the maritime associations (which will be discussed in the next chapter).⁹⁰ With the help of the Maritime Department, as noted, a shipyard began to be built at the kibbutz in 1942; it became one of the location’s most important sectors, thanks to orders from the navy and others.⁹¹ In the spring of that year the kibbutz began building the trawler Caesarea; in June 1943, it bought the trawler with the aid of the Jewish Agency and the HaKibbutz HaMeuhad fund.⁹² But its days were numbered; the Caesarea served until the winter of 1943, and then, while anchored in the Caesarea bay, a surprise storm hit it, and it was shattered on the rocks. In 1944, the kibbutz used its insurance money to purchase the Alisa, an old wooden ship that had stood at the Haifa port since the thirties, and the Ne’eman from Nahshon, and renewed its work in light fishing with the blackout’s end. In early 1947, Sdot Yam returned the Ne’eman to Nahshon and was left with only the Alisa. ⁹³ For three years, Sdot Yam had two different camps, split between the bay at Kiryat Haim and the new location in Caesarea. During these years, conditions were not ripe for the reunification of the whole group in one place. The split weighed heavily on the group socially; it was only in 1944 that most of the mem-

 B.-K. Meirovitz to E. Kaplan [in Hebrew], 8 December 1943, S74/260, CZA, Jerusalem. For more on the hardships of the first group to settle in Caesarea and the initial solutions given regarding land, see Tsur, Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 2:28 – 30.  The decision to build a shipyard at Sdot Yam was based on conditions at the place, which were found to be suitable: a shore with a convenient slope to the sea, a quiet bay allowing for the lowering and raising of boats, and the presence of trees, particularly around Hadera. See Sdot Yam Bulletin [in Hebrew] 114, October 31, 1941.  Sdot Yam Bulletin [in Hebrew] 142, May 19, 1943; Sdot Yam Bulletin [in Hebrew] 175, November 7, 1946. Until the end of the war, in its first three years of existence, the shipyard carried out important projects: two fishing ships, an invasion boat for the British navy, training and sports boats for the PML and sports associations, and fishing boats. See Yehuda, “Sdot Yam’s Way,” in Hanoch, Fishing Settlements; Y. P., “On Fishing Settlements—Sdot Yam Caesarea” [in Hebrew], Yam, January 1946, 12. On building the ship Nitzahon, see Aryeh Boritzer’s account in BenTzvi, Sdot Yam, 30 – 31.  “From Caesarea to Alisa,” Sdot Yam Bulletin [in Hebrew], 146, February 11, 1944; Y. P., “On Fishing Settlements—Sdot Yam Caesarea” [in Hebrew], Yam, January 1946, 11– 12; Porat, Fishery Pioneers, 129 – 31; Tsur, Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 2:167– 68. Alisa was used a number of times after the Second World War to smuggle Palyam members and equipment to the camps of illegal immigrants in Cyprus and to bring weapons from there; see Yehuda Rotem’s account in Ben-Tzvi, Sdot Yam, 28.

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bers reunited in Caesarea.⁹⁴ At the end of the war, the sea sectors were the deciding factor in Sdot Yam’s finances. More than thirty members worked in the sea and its industries, bringing in more than half of the group’s income. Six members worked in trawling, ten in coastal fishing, eight in the shipyard, and six on the navy’s ships and in maritime training.⁹⁵ Of all of the farms along the Mediterranean Sea, as noted, Sdot Yam was the only one that did not abandon fishery before the end of the Mandate period, and the relative weight of the maritime industry in the group’s economy continued to be dominant.

Fishing on Lake Kinneret With the end of the rioting in the late thirties and early forties, the Jewish Agency’s Fisheries Department continued to focus on Jewish fishery on Lake Kinneret, sending instructors to kibbutzim to teach about nets and modern fishery methods.⁹⁶ With time, the kibbutz members learned the habits of the great swarms of bream, and understood that using strong lux lights they could bring them together, much like the sardines in the Mediterranean. The Mandate government had forbidden light fishing, claiming that the method would compromise the balance between the two nations to the advantage of the Jewish fishermen, but—as in other fishing locations in the land—the law was almost never enforced. Ultimately, purse seine nets and light fishing changed the standing practices at Lake Kinneret, and fishery went from a seasonal craft to one that provided support yearround. Thus the primary obstacle standing in the way of all Jewish fishing groups since the twenties—unemployment in the summer months—was eliminated. After the fishing groups grew and gained experience and confidence, the kibbutzim, inspired by the Yishuv’s security institutions, decided that it was time to reopen the old-new campaign for fishing rights on the Batiha. In the background stood the struggle that had taken place a number of years earlier for fishing rights at Lake Kinneret and the results of the conflicts between

 The question of land, the arrangements with PICA, and leasing the land from the authorities occupied the settlers for a number of years and was resolved with the establishment of the state. See Tsur, Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 2:166.  Sdot Yam Bulletin [in Hebrew] 156, May 17, 1945; Yehuda, “Sdot Yam’s Way,” in Hanoch, Fishing Settlements, 89; Bar-Kochba Meirovitz, “Summarizing a Period of Jewish Sea Enterprises” [in Hebrew], Yam, October – November 1946, 7.  One of these was a Yugoslavian expert in purse seine netting, which was far larger than the small cast net; see Nun, Sea of Kinneret, 242.

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Jews and Arabs in Tiberias. The question of fishery at the Kinneret thus raised interest with people such as Joseph Nahmani, one of the founders of Hashomer, who was responsible at the time for the northern region on behalf of the Haganah and served as director of the JNF for the eastern Galilee as well.⁹⁷ Nahmani saw the expansion of Jewish fishery at the Batiha as a need relating to national defense, and urged the settlement institutions to purchase fertile land in the region. In his journal at the time he wrote of fishing in the Batiha that “we must not agree nationally that the Jews should be forbidden entry to part of the Kinneret.”⁹⁸ For a month in late 1941, the two sides clashed, neither letting the other work; this period was called Milḥemet ha-Ḥaramim (the Seine War), for the seine nets used for fishing in the Batiha.⁹⁹ Following negotiations between the sides, and with the intervention of the British, it was decided that because there were seven beach seines on Lake Kinneret, a different group would fish on each day of the week: three of Hori’s groups, three groups from Tiberias, and one group of Jews from Ein Gev and Ginosar.¹⁰⁰ Wydra felt that one day of fishing a week was insufficient. Kibbutz members held 52 out of roughly 180 fishing permits, and they worked with Arabs who had rights and permits to fish; Wydra felt they should not agree to receive only one seventh of the fishing rights on behalf of their group and the Arabs who worked with them. He further noted that the government had announced that beginning in April 1942 it would grant permits only to people who had been in possession of permits in April 1939, a time at which Jews held 25 permits out of 150—a sixth—and this was evidently the basis for giving one workday to the kibbutz fishermen on the Batiha and the Kursi. Wydra resolved that the twenty-seven Jewish fishermen at the lake who had joined from that time could not be denied their right to fish, and that turning back the clock to April 1939 should be fought full-force—it was a step that could serve as a negative precedent in other fields as well.¹⁰¹ Meirovitz also felt that the relative time allotted for Jewish fishing on Lake Kinneret was meager and insufficient; it would be difficult to succeed at fishing

 B.-K. Meirovitz to Y. Gruenbaum, Tel Aviv [in Hebrew], 16 August 1941, S53/597, CZA, Jerusalem.  Weitz, Nahmani, 200 – 201.  Nin, Sea of Kinneret, 244.  Bar Kochba Meirovitz, Tel Aviv, to M. Sharett, Jerusalem [in Hebrew], 14 October 1941, S9/ 1579, CZA, Jerusalem; Bar-Kochba Meirovitz, Tel Aviv, to Y. Gruenbaum, E. Kaplan, and M. Sharett, Jerusalem [in Hebrew], 23 October 1941, S9/1579, CZA, Jerusalem.  Dr. Wydra, Maritime Department, Haifa, to B.-K. Meirovitz, Tel Aviv [in Hebrew], 7 November 1941, S9/1579, CZA, Jerusalem.

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when absent all but one day a week. However, in contrast with Wydra, he saw the new policy as an important accomplishment in principle, one that should not be underestimated: the denial of the full monopoly of the Houri-Goldzweig partnership over the Batiha and the clear and official imparting of rights to Jewish fishermen to fish in a place that had until then been closed to them.¹⁰² The weakening partnership and the growing national conflict at the time were expressed in the first agreement of its kind signed between the Maritime Department and Mino Goldzweig, and a wedge was driven in the long-standing partnership between the families for the first time.¹⁰³ As a result of the events at the Kinneret, and primarily due to the growing conflict about fishery, the British asked for an independent expert opinion that could give a current snapshot of the fish at the lake. English zoologist Dr. Cicely Kate Ricardo-Bertram, the wife of Chief Fisheries Officer Dr. George Colin Lauder Bertram, was asked to investigate the state of fishery and fish at the lake. Bertram’s study extended for a period of a year and a half and was completed at the end of 1942.¹⁰⁴ The central conclusion of the report was that intensive fishery at the lake had damaged the sources and future of the fish in it, and the author recommended a series of activities: reducing excessive fishery by restricting the number of fishermen and issuing only a limited number of permits; supervising the number of fish caught by determining which nets could be used to catch each type of fish; and a blanket prohibition on fishing with any type of nets, at day and at night, within two kilometers of the area where the Jordan entered Lake Kinneret, where the tilapia laid eggs in the shallow water.¹⁰⁵ For the Jewish Agency’s Maritime Department, the most severe decree handed down by the report was the freeze of the balance of power between fishermen from the

 Bar Kochba Meirovitz, Tel Aviv, to Y. Gruenbaum, E. Kaplan, and M. Sharett, Jerusalem [in Hebrew], 23 October 1941, S9/1579, CZA, Jerusalem.  Dr. Wydra, Maritime Department, Haifa, to B.-K. Meirovitz, Tel Aviv [in Hebrew], 7 November 1941, S9/1579, CZA, Jerusalem. The contract for marketing fish was signed in 1942 between Ein Gev and Ginosar and Zalman Goldzweig with the guarantee of the Maritime Department; the kibbutzim committed to pay Goldzweig fifteen Palestine pounds each month for a period of two years and to sell 25 percent of the Jewish fish through him. In exchange, Goldzweig committed to expanding Jewish fishery on the shores of the Kursi and Batiha and to guarantee the interests of the kibbutzim in their relations with the Arab fishermen. If the kibbutzim violated the contract, they would pay Goldzweig reparations in the amount of 360 Palestine pounds. See Tsur, Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 2:79 – 80.  The report was published a relatively long time after it was completed due to a shortage of paper during the war; it became available to the public only in 1944. See Ricardo-Bertram, Lake Tiberias, 3.  Ricardo-Bertram, Lake Tiberias, 14.

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two nations: 30 personal fishing permits and 11 boat permits for the Jews; 130 personal fishing permits and 95 boat permits for the Arabs.¹⁰⁶ Despite the new restrictions, there was a great improvement in Jewish fishery beginning in 1942 due to the new methods and the increasing skill of the fishermen from the Jewish farms.¹⁰⁷ The sector began to carry itself and the Maritime Department opted to stop supporting it. For the kibbutzim, fishery was a constant and permanent industry, and one of their most profitable ones.¹⁰⁸ This new reality reinforced the recognition on the part of the Yishuv leadership institutions’ decision-makers that there was a need to take over fishing rights in the northeastern Kinneret, in the Kursi and Batiha, near the Syrian border, in order to firmly ground the settlements and promote the interests of the Jews in the evolving national conflict.¹⁰⁹ Houri and his fishermen did try to continue their monopoly on fishing at the lake in the final years of the British Mandate, but their activities were far less effective than they had been previously; it was clear that the unqualified monopoly of the Goldzweig partnership over fishery at Lake Kinneret was no longer. Ein Gev, during its early years, was also occupied with sailing, which played an important part in cultivating cruising on the Kinneret and training sailors. A partnership was launched between Ein Gev and Ginosar in 1941—80 percent belonging to Ein Gev and 20 percent to Ginosar. The collaborative venture possessed five motor boats: one with a capacity of ninety passengers, two of forty each, one of twenty-five, and one of twenty.¹¹⁰ At first, the development of sailing was challenged by competition with the Company for the Development of Tiberias, but ultimately an agreement was signed that regulated sailing on the lake and fixed the rates. Ein Gev continued to welcome visitors who came to see

 Nun, Sea of Kinneret, 242. See also Gophen and Gal, Lake Kinneret, 110 – 12. Wydra found a way to moderate the decree somewhat; Yigal Allon, who worked for him as a fisherman, leased the services of Arab fishermen with permits, and they fished for the Maritime Department and under its supervision. See the account of Naftali Wydra [in Hebrew], 19 June 1972, 99/2, HHA, Tel Aviv.  For example, the general yield of fishing at the lake from early August 1942 until the end of March 1943 was some 350 tons, the same amount as during the parallel period in the previous year—but during the 1941– 1942 season this amount was produced in 3,815 workdays, while in 1942– 1943, the kibbutzim invested only 2,472 days. See Dr. Wydra, Haifa, “Ha-Dayig be-Yam Kinneret,” 19 May 1943, S9/1579, CZA, Jerusalem.  B.-K. Meirovitz, Tel Aviv, to Y. Gruenbaum, Jerusalem [in Hebrew], 18 October 1943, S9/1573, CZA, Jerusalem.  Dr. Wydra, Haifa, to B.-K. Meirovitz, Tel Aviv [in Hebrew], 20 May 1942, S9/1579, CZA, Jerusalem.  Tsur, Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 2:81.

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the unique settlement on the banks of the Kinneret, the antiques in the area, and springtime music festivals, which crystallized as a sort of tradition. Ein Gev drew artists, authors, and audiences; decorative leisure gardens sprang up, as did a snack bar, and—near the end of the Mandate period—a guest house, part of the developing phenomenon of rest houses on agricultural farms.¹¹¹ On the eve of the 1948 War of Independence, when the road to Ein Gev was blocked near Tzemah and the Arab village of Samra, boats became the primary method of transport. They served not only to transport people but also to move provisions to farms, fortifications, and building as well as agricultural produce to Degania.¹¹²

Hulata Although the Hula Lake saw a sharp uptick in the number of fish caught early in the war—from sixteen tons in 1939 to sixty in 1940—from that point, and for the next three years, there was a decline in the number of fish caught, an average of forty-seven tons annually. A recovery began near the end of the war, reaching its peak in 1946, when eighty-five tons of fish were caught. It was only after the state was founded that the annual catch in the Hula Lake grew to over one hundred tons a year.¹¹³ The limited catch in the first half of the forties can be explained as resulting from a number of factors: Members of the kibbutz movement transferred from fishery to other sectors or to the army during the Second World War, leading to a shortage and a large turnover in manpower in the industry. There was a lack of advanced equipment, resulting in insufficient exploitation of the fish that were in the lake. With equipment wanting, most of the lake was once again covered in weeds, making it impossible to fish.¹¹⁴ There was no plot of land for a permanent settlement, delaying the founding of an independent fish-

 Drori, Ein Gev, 6 – 8; near the end of the Mandate era, the guesthouse industry on farms included twelve rest houses (three of them on the shore): Givat Brener, Kiryat Anavim, and Maale HaHamisha in the Jerusalem hills; Kfar Etzion and Masu’ot Yitzhak in the Hebron hills; Kfar HaHoresh in the Nazareth hills; Beit Oren on the Carmel; Kfar Giladi and Hanita and in the Galilee hills; Shfayim and Neve Yam on the coast of the Mediterranean; and Ein Gev on Lake Kinneret. See Cohen-Hattab, Tour the Land, 83 – 89.  Kuchinski, Ein Gev, 26 – 27.  Loya, “Fisheries Industry,” 34, and sources there.  Hulata Bulletin 75 [in Hebrew], 22 May 1942.

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ing settlement with a mixed agricultural farm.¹¹⁵ The crowding and the unavailability of suitable living conditions were most likely the reasons for the malaria that spread among the members and led to many lost workdays, also resulting in a decline in the yield at the lake.¹¹⁶ Despite the difficult conditions, attempts to enhance fishing methods continued throughout the war years, and these began to bear fruit near the end of the war. The Hulata fishermen adapted themselves to different fishing methods, expanded the local fishing area, and began to operate a machine that harvested the many aquatic plants that impeded the fishermen in their efforts to reach no small number of areas in the Hula Lake.¹¹⁷ These actions led to independent fishing on the Hula Lake beginning in 1941; support was not received from the Maritime Department any longer. Hulata purchased the monopoly on fishing at the Hula, which became its main livelihood.¹¹⁸ From the early forties, a number of attempts were made for the amelioration of fishery at the Hula Lake by introducing carp—after the Maritime Department had determined, as noted, that carp was a suitable fish for that type of upgrade, as seen in ponds in the Kurdani in 1934 and in Nir David in 1937. The results were, for the most part, positive, but throughout the war years the group struggled with insufficient manpower, which made it impossible for a breakthrough to occur at Hulata.¹¹⁹ In a lecture given by Naftali Wydra at the end of the war, in which he summarized the state of Jewish fishery, he highlighted the great change that had taken place in terms of manpower. In his opinion, one decade earlier nearly all of the fishing in the land was undertaken by Arabs and Italians. At the war’s end, there were 250 Jewish fishermen, 70 of whom worked in the lakes— Hula and the Kinneret—and 100 of whom worked on trawlers in the Mediterra-

 Hulata’s residents lived for years on the limited area of the permit and worked eight hundred dunams that they divided with Talil, the Arab village nearby. See Hulata to Palestine Land Development Company, Jerusalem [in Hebrew], 24 November 1942, S18/3249, CZA, Jerusalem.  Latuvitsky, “Five Years,” in Kibbutz Hulata, Five Years, 32. Kostika reports that the malaria spread in the camp, infecting as many as half of the members at times; Kostika, Diary, 49 – 50.  For more on the improvements to fishing methods during the war, see Y. P., “On Fishing Settlements—Hulata” [in Hebrew], Yam, February 1946, 9 – 10; Mulka, “Eight Years of Fishery” [in Hebrew], Yam, October–November 1946, 19.  B.-K. Meirovitz to Gruenbaum, proposed budget for sea work and fishery for 1944– 1945 [in Hebrew], 13 September 1944, S53/1338, CZA, Jerusalem.  On the introduction of the first eight thousand carp brought from Tel Amal to the Hula Lake for a breeding experiment, see Nachum Horovitz to Palestine Land Development Company, Jerusalem [in Hebrew], 8 March 1940, L18/3249, CZA, Jerusalem. For more on introducing fish and establishing fish ponds at the Hula Lake during the forties and until the outbreak of the War of Independence, see Loya, “Fisheries Industry,” 40 – 41 and sources there.

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nean; the rest were involved in coastal fishing using various methods. Trawling at the time, he stated, was made up of twelve motorized boats on the shores of the land.¹²⁰

Maritime Training, Education, and Culture during the Second World War During the war, maritime training and education continued. The role of maritime training was for the most part taken on by the sports associations such as Zevulun, the Sea Scouts, and Hapoel’s water sports department—alongside the nautical school founded in Haifa in late 1938. These also continued their various activities in the maritime realm, and hundreds of members who joined the merchant and military fleet came from their ranks.

The Nautical School in Haifa during the War Despite the hardships of war—the Italian entrée into the war and the ban on entering the open seas—the institutions responsible for the nautical school continued their efforts to maintain a regular routine. Sea camps, for example, were erected on the shores of Lake Kinneret, where sailing was permitted, and the students continued their training there; students in other departments continued their studies uninterrupted.¹²¹ The British noticeably supported the school, view-

 N. Wydra, Lecture at JNF House Jerusalem, untitled [in Hebrew], 11 July 1945, S74/202, CZA, Jerusalem. Half of the ships used for deepwater fishing were owned by Nahshon: Snapir, Nun, Nissan, Nakdimon, Ne’eman, and Nitzahon. Other than Snapir, the ships had all been built in the Land of Israel during the war years and equipped with 60 – 120-horsepower maritime diesel engines. An additional Nahshon ship was Peled, purchased in Holland in 1938, transferred to the Royal Navy in 1941, and sunk in an enemy action in 1943; Gusta Strumpf-Rechav, “Deepwater Fishing” [in Hebrew], Yam, July 1945, 6 – 7. Nahshon attempted to wage a legal battle about the commandeering of the Peled, which was unsuccessful. For more, see M-5/4339, ISA, Jerusalem.  G. Aharoni, “The Nautical School in Haifa” [in Hebrew], Yam, September 1945, 3. So, for example, in the summer of 1940 it was reported that twenty-eight cadets from the nautical school took part in a two-week summer camp in Ein Gev, on Lake Kinneret. The camp’s program included sailing, hikes in the area, training aboard dinghies and sailboats, fishing instruction, lectures, sport, and games. The expeditions on Lake Kinneret took place both at day and at night, in cooperation with the fishermen from Ein Gev who were training with nets. See Haaretz [in Hebrew], August 16, 1940, 7; Binot, Jubilee, 11.

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ing it as a tool for educating the young military men who would take part in the war effort in the future. The outbreak of the war prevented the Cap Pilar from arriving in the land, but practical work took place for a number of months on governmental minesweepers; students participated in drills and maneuvers on board.¹²² The practical work continued on two sailboats leased from Hapoel, Haim Arlosoroff and Phoenicia, and trips to the ports in Egypt and Cyprus, extending for between ten and fourteen days, were also conducted.¹²³ With the outbreak of the war, Captain Miller, commander of the cadets and head of the sailing department, was conscripted; the school’s principal, Dr. Bardin, who was visiting the United States at the time, was unable to return to the Land of Israel due to restricted access. For a period of time, then, the school was missing both its principal and the cadet commander and head of the sailing department. Zeev Hayam was appointed the replacement cadet commander and head of the sailing department, and in September 1941, the school’s administration was transferred to Dr. Gershon Aharoni. Despite the difficulties the war posed, the first class graduated at the end of 1942.¹²⁴ Nineteen of the twenty-four students who were tested—with external testers and under the supervision of the governmental ministry of education—passed and received certification: three sailors, eight marine mechanics, four radio operators, and four shipbuilders. Of these, six mechanics enlisted in the navy and two radio operators enlisted in the army. Another ten students, in the middle of their practical experience after their second or third year of studies, their studies not yet complete, enlisted in the navy as

 Training aboard the British minesweepers was conducted with the approval of Captain Lydekker, naval officer-in-charge of Palestine ports, and the head of the Haifa Port, Rogers, who had a positive attitude with regard to the school and tried to help its continued activities even after the war began. With Italy joining the war in the summer of 1940, the students’ work on the minesweepers ceased. See Minutes from the meeting of the board of governors of the nautical school [in Hebrew], 6 May 1940, S74/253, CZA, Jerusalem; Shlomo Kaplansky’s lecture about the nautical school at the PML conference [in Hebrew], 9 March 1941, S74/253, CZA, Jerusalem.  From 1937, the Haim Arlosoroff served as a training ship for hundreds of youth; it sailed along the coast of the land and took longer journeys to neighboring countries. Many of the Jewish mariners received their training on its deck. In 1953, after sixteen years of service, it was decided that the ship—which had aged so much that there was no longer a point in investing in its repair—would be dismantled. See Hayam, Ships’ Tales, 151– 54; Herman, Conquering a Route, 87.  Yarkon, The Sea, 50 – 51. On Zeev Hayam’s appointment, see Protocol from board of governors’ meeting [in Hebrew], 3 June 1943, S74/262, CZA, Jerusalem. For more, see Binot, Jubilee, 9 – 10.

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well.¹²⁵ By the end of the war, three classes, a total of forty-eight students, had completed their studies. Forty-seven who had not completed their studies, and a number of graduates, served in the British navy during the war. With the end of the war, Captain Miller returned to his post; at that time the school had 120 students registered.¹²⁶

Sports Associations and Maritime Cultural Education during the Second World War Maritime activities in the various sports associations continued throughout the war. Many of the associations’ graduates enlisted in the British navy and activities in the associations also increased. So, for example, Hapoel’s sea company in Tel Aviv reported that it had two hundred members in eighteen sailing training groups in 1944; some of the groups were composed of high school students. They had at their disposal five training boats, one motorboat, and one small communications boat. The groups trained under Shmuel Tankus, who was the national instructor under the auspices of the training committee adjacent to the Jewish Agency’s Maritime Department.¹²⁷ The Zevulun association also reported a noticeable growth in the number of trainees and diversifying activity during the war years “due to the awakening of Jewish youth in the maritime realm.” Members of the association oftentimes sailed along the coast to places such as Gaza, Netanya, and Atlit, and continued to train on the Ofek, even modifying it for deepwater fishing.¹²⁸ During the war, the national institutions continued their efforts to patronize maritime activity. A partnership formed between the PML, the Jewish Agency’s Maritime Department, and Knesset Yisrael’s education department, and a training camp for sea instructors was held in late 1942 in Caesarea for some forty trainees from Zevulun, Hapoel, and the Sea Scouts. The trainees practiced for fourteen days and took examinations for the rank of maritime instructor, in accordance with curriculum and training created by the Maritime Department’s

 S. Kaplansky, “The Nautical School,” Second Annual Conference, December 7– 8 [in Hebrew], 1942, Yam, March 1943, 7– 10, 21– 22; account of a graduate of the first class in marine engineering, see Yehoshua Lahav, interview [in Hebrew], 5 September 1993, HI, Haifa.  “Maritime development,” most likely 1945, p. 2, S74/56, CZA, Jerusalem.  The General Federation of Labor (Histadrut), Hapoel Association for Physical Culture, Tel Aviv, Annual survey of Hapoel activity [in Hebrew], 2– 3 April, 1944, 1367/04– 3880, LI, Tel Aviv.  Report on Zevulun activity for 1942– 1943 [in Hebrew], 16 November 1943, S74/262, CZA, Jerusalem.

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Committee for Maritime Guidance and Instruction. That same year, a similar partnership was formed for the first time for students’ maritime education, beginning with six settlements along the coast: Nahariya, Shavei Zion, Kfar Vitkin, Herzliya, Atlit, and Lake Kinneret’s shores.¹²⁹ The curriculum included theoretical studies and practical work aboard boats. The number of students in the program in 1941– 1942 stood at 430; the following year it was over 600.¹³⁰ Swimming was accorded a special place in the curriculum; swimming lessons were given to students, first and foremost out of a recognition of the importance of imparting swimming skills to Yishuv children and also to draw them nearer to the sea and water. The first national public school assembly for swimming under the auspices of the joint committee of Knesset Yisrael’s education department and the PML, which took place in 1945 at the pool in Bat Galim, had more than seven thousand participants.¹³¹ One of the important enterprises in the field of swimming, which developed during the war years and was accorded an important national role, was swimming across Lake Kinneret. The first person to do so was Aliza Wirtz, the Hapoel swimming champion at the time, who crossed the Kinneret from Tiberias to Ein Gev’s shores on November 4, 1942. She established a precedent for women swimming across the Kinneret and a new record of 4:10 hours; this, as was proudly reported in the press at the time, was far faster than the previous record, set by a British officer, who had swum it in five and a half hours.¹³² Following Wirtz’s success and the public notice it created, Hapoel’s coordinator leveraged the idea and organized swimming competitions across Lake Kinneret. The first began on July 24, 1943, and ran from Ein Gev to Tiberias. Twenty-seven competitors took

 Protocol from meeting of the Committee for Maritime Guidance and Instruction, Maritime Department, Haifa [in Hebrew], 13 January 1942, S74/254, CZA, Jerusalem; The Jewish National Council, Department of Education, Tel Aviv, to Naftali Wydra, Maritime Department, Haifa [in Hebrew], 1 February 1942, S74/254, CZA, Jerusalem; S. Tankus, Report on maritime training activity in the colonies, Tel Aviv [in Hebrew], 25 September 1942, S74/254, CZA, Jerusalem; Wydra to M. Rivlin, Committee for Maritime Guidance and Instruction Coordinator of Palestine Maritime League, Tel Aviv [in Hebrew], 1 November 1942, S74/254, CZA, Jerusalem; M. Rivlin, report at the second national conference of the PML [in Hebrew], Yam, December 7– 8, 1942, 5; account of the summer camp in Caesarea in the summer of 1943, see Benny Telem, interview [in Hebrew], 11 August 1994, HI, Haifa.  B.-K. Meirovitz, summary of Maritime Department activity in 1942– 1943 [in Hebrew], S105/ 5, CZA, Jerusalem.  Yam [in Hebrew], July 1945, 2.  “Aliza Wirtz Has Crossed Lake Kinneret” [in Hebrew], Davar, November 10, 1942, 6; A. Wirtz, “How I Crossed Lake Kinneret” [in Hebrew], Davar, November 17, 1942, 2.

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part; twenty-five reached the finish line. The group included Hapoel swimmers, Arabs from around the country and from Lebanon, residents of the region, British officers and soldiers, and one soldier from New Zealand. Of the men, Shmuel Hadash, from the Kinneret colony, won, having traversed the distance in 3:13:50; Wirtz placed first of four women, with a new record of 3:31:50. A second competition was held one year later; thirty-five swimmers participated, and Hadash and Wirtz once again took first place, even improving their times.¹³³

Sea Culture: The Seafarers’ House and Sea Day During the Second World War, with the enlistment of hundreds of Jewish youth to the British Royal Navy and the large number of Jews working on board ships, the need for the “creation of social framework, a place for the Jewish mariner to meet his friends, exchange views and impressions, and find a homey and cultural atmosphere when he reaches the homeland’s shore after his wanderings abroad” arose. At the core of this idea was the desire for a center for the seamen reaching the shore, a place that would bring together seafarers, graduates of the nautical school, and water athletes and primarily “serve as a workshop for the sea spirit and way of life.”¹³⁴ At the initiative of the PML’s Haifa branch and with the aid of the PML coordinator and the Jewish Agency’s Maritime Department, the Seafarers’ House (Beit Yordei ha-Yam) was inaugurated in Haifa in late 1942. The center was in the Tnuva building on HaMelakhim Street, at the northern entrance to the port. The place had seven rooms, including a library, reading room, game room, the Maritime Laborers’ Association office, a kitchen, and a restaurant. On Friday nights, dances and parties were held.¹³⁵ The place ran efficiently for a number of years, serving as a meeting place for mariners and water sports enthusiasts; it populated the offices of mariners’ and officers’ associations as well as the seafarers’ employment office; however, with time it lost its uniqueness and standing.¹³⁶ One room at the Seafarers’ House ultimately constituted the beginnings of the National Maritime Museum. The desire to establish a marine museum in

 A. Ben-Shalom, “The Sixth Swim at the Center of the Water Festival at Lake Kinneret” [in Hebrew], Davar, September 26, 1958, 6; Y. Ben-Avigdor, “The Third Swim across Lake Kinneret” [in Hebrew], Yam, September 1945, 11– 12.  M. Pomrock, “The Seafarers’ House in Haifa” [in Hebrew], Yam, November 1945, 3.  “The Inauguration of the Seafarers’ House in Haifa,” Second National Assembly, December 7– 8, 1942 [in Hebrew], Yam, March 1943, 20 – 21; Eshel, Campaign, 27.  Yarkoni, The Sea, 117.

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the Land of Israel had existed even before the war. In mid-1938 a committee was selected on behalf of the PML; the committee developed a general outline for the marine museum, out of a desire to draw the Yishuv to the sea and to Jewish seafaring in particular. The outline included the following departments: hydrobiology, oceanography, shipbuilding, shipboard devices, history of shipping, ports and their chronicles, shipping in the Land of Israel, water sports, sea products and fishing devices, maritime literature, and paintings and pictures. The committee contacted individuals and organizations in the land and overseas, and initial displays were received.¹³⁷ During the war the museum’s collection grew, with displays coming in from various sources, including models of boats and ships, instruments for nautical navigation, pictures of ships, globes and nautical maps, books, and journals about shipping and the sea.¹³⁸ At the end of 1946, the museum had some five hundred displays and pictures.¹³⁹ Another cultural enterprise in the maritime realm, first inaugurated during the Second World War, was Sea Day. This was an initiative of the Jewish Agency’s Maritime and Fisheries Department in cooperation with the PML, which in 1943 fixed the twenty-third of Iyar, the Hebrew date on which the British gave permission to unload cargo on the beaches of Tel Aviv, as a national holiday on the Jewish calendar.¹⁴⁰ The festive opening of the first Sea Day was held in the Ohel Shem hall in Tel Aviv; the national flag and the PML flag were raised on the platform, and the Sea Scouts stood on flag guard. At the event, David Remez stated that “Sea Day should educate the nation to love the sea.” An assembly held on the banks of the Yarkon River was attended by three hundred people, including members of Zevulun, Hapoel, and the Sea Scouts; at the event certificates were awarded to graduates of the instructors’ course. An orchestra played and four fishing boats, each with its flag, left the Tel Aviv port and appeared before the audience. The assembly concluded with the playing of the British anthem and Hatikva. In Jerusalem, an assembly was held at Edison Hall. Deputy Mayor Daniel Auster and Jewish National Council board member Shlomo Zalman Shragai both spoke. In Haifa, a roll call was held in the Technion plaza under the auspices of the PML; Mayor Shabtai Levy, British naval officer-in-charge of Palestine ports Captain Lydekker, and others were present. Speeches were made and the

 Yehuda Zeva, “Museum of the Sea in the Land of Israel” [in Hebrew], Yam, May 1938, 3.  Yam [in Hebrew], December 1945, 15.  Y. Zeva, “The Maritime Museum in Haifa, Founded by the Palestine Maritime League” [in Hebrew], Yam, October–November 1946, 15 – 17.  Bauer, “Sea Day.” My thanks to Dr. Bauer for making the lecture available to me.

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ceremony was attended by trainees from the nautical school, Zevulun, and different sports associations.¹⁴¹ The Sea Day format developed over the next few years, and included assemblies and celebrations held in the coastal cities, Tel Aviv and Haifa. On the banks of the Yarkon River and the sea, members of maritime organizations and delegations from marine divisions, youth groups, the nautical school, and elementary and high schools assembled. In other locations, such as Jerusalem, the colonies, and the kibbutzim, mass gatherings were also held. The participation of Yishuv leaders in these activities lent them extra significance. The nursery, elementary, and high schools dedicated special lessons to the subject, as per the directives of Knesset Yisrael’s education department. The press—both in the Land of Israel and outside of it—published relevant material, and the radio took note of the events in special broadcasts.¹⁴² The Jewish Agency Executive, Maritime Department, and PML, the partners and supporters of Sea Day celebrations, and the organizing bodies standing behind the initiative, wished, of course, to underline the national character of the day. The speeches given noted the value of the sea to the Zionist movement, the Jewish nation, and Jewish settlement in the land. However, as in other maritime fields, here, too, a disagreement arose between right and left as to the origins of Jewish sea enterprises. This began as early as the first Sea Day in May 1943, as is clear in ha-Mashḳif at the time: Decency would have required that the achievements and campaigns in this field taken on by others, who were in effect pioneers, be at least mentioned on this day. However, in our community this is not customary, and thus we will note that the beginning of Jewish conquest of the sea in practice was accomplished by Jabotinsky’s movement…. The watchword for Jewish conquest of the sea was sounded publicly by Jabotinsky and his students many years before the Jewish Agency dreamed of being occupied with this profession. (Emphasis in original).¹⁴³

The conflict between right and left around Sea Day continued; it would accompany the community in the years that followed the war as well, as we will see in the next chapter.

 “We Have the Right to Call the Mediterranean Sea Ours” [in Hebrew], ha-Boḳer, May 30, 1943, 4.  “The Sea Pioneers” [in Hebrew], ha-Mashḳif, May 30, 1943, 2.  “Sea Pioneers” [in Hebrew], ha-Mashḳif, May 30, 1943, 2.

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Military Sea Training in the Haganah and Palmach during the Second World War Activities in water sports associations and naval divisions of sports associations —used, as noted, as cover for activities for the defense and security of the settlements as well—continued to increase throughout the war. This was particularly important given the growing importance of the sea as a major artery in bringing survivors of the atrocities in Europe to the land, a task whose crucial nature became clearer as the war neared its end. Maritime training activities conducted by the Haganah and Palmach, which increased near the end of the Second World War, were part of the Yishuv’s central leadership institutions’ evolving understanding of the sea. At the center of this understanding stood the growing significance attributed to establishing a naval military force to reinforce the Yishuv’s goals, given the growing conflict with the Arab community; a national sea force, it was felt, influenced historic events and states’ political and economic might. David Ben-Gurion, in a speech given toward the end of the war, articulated the central leadership institutions’ understanding of the growing importance of the sea in light of the changing reality at the time. He related in particular to the anticipated immigration. Ben-Gurion saw the sea not as a boundary but rather as a bridge to the Jewish world in the Diaspora, and even related to it as an existential foundation, a source of livelihood that would lend itself to the Jewish community’s financial independence with a state in the making: Somehow, we thought the seashore was the end of the land. This is a mistake. On the sea’s shore extends, in the space of hundreds of thousands and tens of thousands of kilometers to infinity, a maritime Land of Israel [emphasis in original]…. We must expand the domain of the land, because we must expand the possibilities of absorbing millions of Jews who will ultimately arrive here. Because the sea is, above all else, a huge and increasing opportunity for economy and livelihood, for maritime agriculture. Agriculture provides food, and the sea provides food, and it may be the greatest food provider in the world. Sea transport, too, is one of the most important life arteries—the most important of all. But the sea is more than that. We come to the Land of Israel to be sovereign, to support ourselves. We come to heal the Jewish race, and the sea is first and foremost a source of strength. The sea expands horizons, the sea is a great space. And the sea connects the entire world. We wish to gather in the exiles in the homeland, but we do not wish to isolate ourselves from the land’s great centers. For many more years, Jewish centers will remain throughout the entire Diaspora, and even after we bring all of the Diasporas to the land, we will maintain contact with the great centers of humanity. The sea is a bridge…. The great certificate of our generation,

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of this period, for the Jewish youth, is the establishment of the Jewish state. The Jewish state will rise if we have Jewish land and a Jewish sea [emphasis mine].¹⁴⁴

Indeed, the British White Paper, published before the outbreak of the war, in May 1939—which included severe restrictions on immigration—was one of the central factors pushing the Yishuv to organize for the increase of illegal immigration. The aspiration and the commitment that the central leadership undertook to aid in this immigration, most of which was slated to arrive by sea, necessarily drew the leadership closer to the sea. David (Davidka) Nameri of Kibbutz Ashdot Ya’akov took part in organizing the disembarking immigrants on the land’s shores; he headed the Tower and Stockade group’s operations team and was at the center of the maritime activity.¹⁴⁵ Nameri was conscripted by the Mossad LeAliyah Bet, an arm of the Jewish Agency Executive and the Haganah that was established to coordinate all of the illegal immigration activities.¹⁴⁶ Many books and studies have been written on the immigration, on the Mossad LeAliyah Bet, on the clandestine immigration ships, on the deportation camps, and on the immigrants themselves. It is not within this study’s scope to expand on these subjects but rather to examine the growing place accorded to maritime training and support of the immigration enterprise. This resulted from the Haganah and Palmach’s mounting recognition of the importance of controlling the sea for the immigration campaign and the military necessity of the sea professions for the future. Nameri opened the first maritime course under the guise of Hapoel’s maritime activity in the exhibition grounds in Tel Aviv, close to the Yarkon, on July 8, 1939.¹⁴⁷ In effect, the course was part of the Haganah’s special activities units (known by the acronym Pum), led by Yitzhak Sadeh. The course’s objective was to train people who could accompany the illegal ships and help passengers disembark at the seaside settlements; it did not place an emphasis on naval warfare. Some twenty-five students came to the course from all corners of the land—  D. Ben-Gurion, “The Sea Vision” [in Hebrew], speech on Sea Day, Haifa 1944, Yam, October–November 1946, 4– 6.  Yavin and Derech, Davidka, 41– 45.  Much has been written on the Mossad LeAliyah Bet. For a selection, see Horev, Mighty Waters, 11– 24; Tzahor, “Mossad Le’Aliya Bet”; Avneri, “White Paper”; Boaz, Shaul Avigur, 224– 67.  Hapoel’s sea company members were involved in the first maritime security operations with the July 29, 1934 arrival of the Velos, a ship that signaled the onset of illegal immigration through the Mediterranean Sea before the Second World War. Three members of Hapoel led the ship: Commander Shaike Kahana, Katriel Yaffe as emergency captain, and Mishka from Kiryat Haim as responsible for passengers. See Avnery, “Velos” to “Taurus,” 25; “Memories of Shmulik Tankus of the Illegal Immigration in the Thirties,” in Tankus, Hapoel, 15 – 19.

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from the fishing settlements at Ginosar and Hulata and Plugat HaYam and from amongst the port workers in Haifa and Tel Aviv. The training included rowing, operating sails, swimming, navigation, commanding boats, and sailing at day and night. Three of Hapoel’s sailboats were at their disposal—Dov, Rivka, and Tirza—named for Dov Hoz and his family, who had been killed in a car accident. The first naval course was six weeks long; at its end, the graduates were given the rank of “Nautical Instructor.” Those who completed the course returned home, where they were charged with teaching a group of friends to row and sail, each in their own location.¹⁴⁸ By September 1940, three more courses had been held at the exhibition grounds, each two to three months long and disguised as belonging to Hapoel’s maritime division. A number of similar courses, ten days long each, were held for members of sports associations and other maritime youth groups as well as for the students at the nautical school in Haifa.¹⁴⁹

Operation Boatswain The Second World War and the gradual waning of illegal immigration cut short the flow of courses, and it was only in 1941 that training and maritime activity were renewed. This resulted, in large part, from cooperation between the Haganah and the British intelligence’s Special Operations Executive (SOE), which wished to train commando forces that could act over enemy lines using the sea. On January 1, 1941, the Haganah opened a second maritime course at the exhibition grounds in Tel Aviv, supported by British intelligence, this time with an emphasis placed on landing and sabotage. In the early stages, sixteen members of HaKibbutz HaMeuhad who had taken part in earlier courses partici-

 Yavin and Derech, Davidka, 46 – 47, 119. The instructors in the first course were Katriel Yaffe, Shmuel Tankus, and Yaacov Agiev. For more on the types of drills and initial activities of the course’s participants in disembarking immigrants on the land’s shores, see the account of Shlomo Kostika, a participant in the first naval course; Kostika, Diary, 51– 55. The three boats were built in the Tel Aviv shipyard between 1938 and 1939, and each of them had space for eight rowers as well as a large sail area that was very well suited for training mariners in courses. For more on the Dov, Rivka, and Tirza, see Yanai and Almog, Gates Are Open, 2. Shmuel Tankus joined Hapoel’s maritime division in 1933 and later served as an instructor in Haganah courses in the Tel Aviv exhibition grounds as well as in the first courses of Palyam’s boat commanders, where he was the lead instructor; he was also a traveling instructor for seafaring in the kibbutzim occupied with fishery. Between 1938 and 1939 he commanded five illegal immigration ships. He was one of the first people in Israel’s navy, where his initial position was head of the instruction department. See Tankus, “Ships on Their Way,” 24– 27; Eshel, Shmuel Tankus, 45 – 47.  Avigur et al., Hagana, 3:1:74; Brener, HaKibbutz HaMeuhad, 265 – 66.

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pated alongside sixteen new recruits and volunteers; in April, these recruits were joined by fourteen Haganah members who had prior military experience. Twenty-three young men from the course were selected for a planned operation in Syria. The goal of the operation was to detonate the refineries on the coast of Tripoli in order to cut off the supply of fuel to German planes. Zvi Spector was selected as commander of the operation, and the group, known in Hebrew as “KafGimmel Yordei ha-Sira” (the twenty-three who descended in the boat), included Katriel Yaffe, the boat’s naval commander, and Amiram Shochat, a veteran in illegal immigration and seafaring. The group was joined by a member of the British SOE, Major Sir Anthony Palmer. The twenty-four young men set out on May 18, 1941, in a police boat called the Sea Lion, with three small rowboats on its deck. But on that same day contact with them was lost. All efforts to locate them came up empty, and they were declared missing. It was a great loss to the Haganah, and a tough blow to the Yishuv’s morale at the time, as well as a setback to the infrastructure of the Haganah’s sea company.¹⁵⁰ Operation Boatswain, despite having ended in great tragedy, is considered the first operation conducted by the Palmach, which had been founded three days earlier, on May 15, 1941.¹⁵¹

From a Sea Division (December 1943) to a Sea Company (April 1945) During the war, with the growing news about the fate of Europe’s Jews, the demand to prepare for illegal immigration operations, to learn seafaring, and to create a military naval force grew. In late 1942, the Palmach headquarters concluded that it must expedite the establishment of a naval force that could take on the military aspects of immigration; in January 1943, the Palmach’s first naval course opened.¹⁵² The course was designated for members of Palmach’s Company 7 (Pluga Zayin), and it was held at Kibbutz Sdot Yam, which served from that time as the Palmach’s naval base. The curriculum was prepared by

 Avigur et al., Hagana, 3:1:73, 363 – 65. The fate of the Sea Lion and its crew is still unclear today, although it is known that body parts from the crew washed up on the shore a number of days after its disappearance; they were buried in the Jewish cemetery in Tripoli. See the report of the Ministry of Defense, containing all known sources until this point on the subject, in Ami-Oz and Arieli, “Twenty-four.” For words in memory of Zvi Spector, see Gilead, Secret Shield, 94– 96; in memory of Katriel Yaffe, see Gilead, Secret Shield, 97– 100; Bergman, Katriel Yaffe.  Avigur et al., Hagana, 3:1:365.  Yanai and Almog, Gates Are Open, 14; for Israel Averbach’s account of the first naval course see Yanai and Almog, Gates Are Open, 45 – 46; Averbach, Agitated Sea, 19 – 20.

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Shmuel Tankus; the course was three months long and attended by thirty fighters from amongst the first Palmach members. It was followed by two additional courses with similar numbers of participants. The unit was given four primary tasks: (1) Conducting illegal immigration—leading immigrant ships and rowing boats to bring the immigrants to shore; (2) Maritime sabotage—training naval saboteurs to damage German vessels and coastal facilities when encountering German forces and damaging British vessels attempting to hinder immigration; (3) Sea transport—operating vessels to transfer supply units and weapons, if roads were under British control or Arabs were attacking the transport routes on land; (4) Landing units—cavalry units trained on vessels who could land on enemy shores while fighting was going on. The course covered a variety of subjects: swimming, rowing boats, sailing, motorboats, care of sea equipment, recognizing the land’s shores, coastal navigation, meteorology, the sea and its nature, methods for disembarking passengers to the shore, international maritime law, and basic knowledge of the various sea professions.¹⁵³ The first three courses yielded one hundred graduates—but in 1943 there was very little clandestine immigration. The graduates did not become an independent naval unit but rather were sent back to their companies in the Palmach. The Palmach headquarters at the time, under Yitzhak Sadeh, did not view the goals mentioned above as realistic ones; it felt that the time had not yet come for an independent naval framework and preferred to disperse the graduates among different Palmach companies so that each one had a naval component that could work against obstacles in water such as the Jordan and Lake Kinneret.¹⁵⁴ Sadeh insisted that the naval training should only be one part of general training, in the spirit of his well-known saying: “A Palmachnik should be like a duck: he should know a little about floating, and a little about flying, and a little about walking.”¹⁵⁵

 Gilead, Palmach, 226 – 27. The passage in Gilead’s Palmach was written by Yigal Allon; see Allon, Palmach Battles, 71– 72.  Yanai and Almog, Gates Are Open, 14; Shmuel Yanai, interview [in Hebrew], 19 November 1995, HI, Haifa.  Saying quoted by Zalman Perach, the Palyam’s first commander. It is brought in Zohar and Pail, Naval Palmach, 34.

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In the summer of 1943, an agreement was reached between the Mossad LeAliyah Bet and the Haganah; the Palmach’s seamen would be available to the Mossad LeAliyah Bet when necessary, and it would, in turn, fund the Palmach’s naval training.¹⁵⁶ In light of this, and in response to the initiative coming from the soldiers in the field,¹⁵⁷ Yitzhak Sadeh approved the establishment of a special professional naval unit within Palmach’s Company 7 in December of that year.¹⁵⁸ Zalman Perach, a member of Kibbutz Sdot Yam and later Beit HaShita, was appointed its first commander. The establishment of the unit was meant as a response to two central demands: increasing the professional naval military ability and providing aid to the growing needs of the illegal immigration activities organized by the Mossad LeAliyah Bet.¹⁵⁹ The unit’s base was in Kiryat Motzkin, where Kibbutz Sdot Yam had organized before it settled in its permanent location next to Caesarea. Members of the naval unit began to work at the Haifa port; there, they could earn their livelihood while training. Kibbutz members who had first served as instructors for the Palmach worked alongside them in various jobs. A special contract was signed with the administration of Solel Boneh and approved by the Haifa Workers’ Council; it detailed working procedures that would allow the Palmach members to work and train on and off. At the port, the Palmach members looked for opportunities to board merchant and fishing ships in order to increase their experience, and a number of them boarded merchant ships and served initially as deck hands.¹⁶⁰ In early 1944, discussions were held between representatives of the Mossad LeAliyah Bet and the Palmach; details about the cooperation between the two bodies for dealing with illegal immigration were determined. The Palmach Headquarters sought the most quick and efficient ways to expand its members’ pro-

 Gilead, Palmach, 228. By late 1942 the horrors of the situation in Europe had become clear to the Jewish community in the Land of Israel and attempts to form a rescue policy for the survivors began. For more on the Yishuv leadership’s shift in relation to immigration between 1933 and 1944, see Ofer, Escaping the Holocaust, 199 – 217.  In the literature written by Palyam veterans, it is clear that in the disagreement with Yitzhak Sadeh the seafarers had the upper hand—there was a need for an organic naval unit that would advance naval training and could act at sea primarily in immigration—thanks to the determination of Zalman Perach, who led the “revolt” and was appointed commander of the naval unit established. See Yanai and Almog, Gates Are Open, 14.  Yanai and Almog, Gates Are Open, 15.  Gilead, Palmach, 229.  Ibid. For Israel Averbach’s account of the naval unit’s work at the port of Haifa see Yanai and Almog, Gates Are Open, 47.

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fessional training. It held a ship’s mechanic course, and—in order to expedite the training of the Palmach sailors—held the field work for the course’s graduates on Hapoel’s Haim Arlosoroff. Moreover, with the help of the Mossad LeAliyah Bet, an agreement was signed with Atid, which made the Amos available to the Palmach; during commercial trips, it served as a training ship for the Palmach’s seamen.¹⁶¹ Maritime combat took another step—which led to a turning point in its development—when an agreement was signed between the Palmach Headquarters, the Mossad LeAliyah Bet, and the nautical school in Haifa in January 1945; the agreement stated that the Technion would hold a secret course for naval officers. The course’s goal was to train commanders on cargo and passenger ships, in light of the tasks expected to be necessary with the renewed illegal immigration. At the time, the size of the sea division was already larger than one platoon, and in April 1945 the Palmach Headquarters decided to split the seamen’s division off of Company 7 and to make it a separate naval unit, Company 10, within the fourth battalion, Palmach’s staff battalion. As Yigal Allon writes, this occurred due to the looming end of the Second World War and the expectation of large waves of immigration, which drove the establishment of a special framework that would focus on the tasks involved in the clandestine immigration, primarily the arrival of the immigrants. The first commander of the company, which later became the Naval Palmach—Palmaḥ Yami or Palyam—was one of its first trainees, Avraham Zakai.¹⁶² The courses and training that took place during the war years would be tested in the three subsequent years—1945 – 1948—during which the company would be occupied with the intensive activity of accompanying ships and disembarking illegal immigrants on the shores of the land within the immigration that was renewed with the end of the war, as we will see in the next chapter.

 Zohar and Pail, Naval Palmach, 37; Yehonatan Kinarti, in his interview (30 November 1997, HI, Haifa [Hebrew]), gives an account of his work on board the Amos for three months; on Amos before it became a training ship for the Palmach, see Avneri, From “Velos” to “Taurus,” 44– 45.  Avneri, From “Velos” to “Taurus,” 38 – 40. Avraham Zakai (1923 – 1989) rose through the ranks in naval trainings at the time, eventually becoming the commander of the naval company; in his youth he joined the Haganah and in 1936, in the days of the establishment of the Tel Aviv port, he joined Hapoel’s sea company in Tel Aviv. In 1942, he joined the Palmach and was a trainee in the first course for boat commanders that was held in Caesarea in January 1943; he subsequently served as an instructor. In 1944 he was appointed commander of the Palmach’s sea company and in January 1945 he joined the first naval officers’ course (see next chapter), which opened in the nautical school in Haifa. Four months later, he was appointed the first commander of the Palmach’s sea company, which initially numbered forty-five members, and he led it until June 1946. See Zakai, Avraham Zakai, 30 – 53.

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The restrictions on maritime activity in Palestine during the Second World War— including the prohibition on maritime trade and fishery in the Mediterranean Sea, the closure of the country’s ports to civilian activity, and the seizure of a good number of the Jewish community’s vessels for the British navy—led at first to the near-total paralysis of the different sea professions. In response, the Yishuv took great pains to adapt its sea activity to the new reality. In its aid to the British navy’s war effort, the Yishuv accumulated much experience, and this was at its disposal with the end of the war and in advance of national and maritime independence. Functional changes took place at the ports with the British’s military’s needs, and thus Haifa’s port welcomed many Jewish workers, first as professionals—welders and electricians—in the British Royal Navy. Near the end of the war, the number of Jewish workers at the port was even greater than it had been before the war. In the Tel Aviv port, which was nearly completely closed to civilian traffic, a number of sea occupations that had not developed earlier in the Yishuv emerged, primarily in shipyards with the building and repair of ships, fishing boats, and even minesweepers, which the British navy needed at the time. While all passenger and cargo ships had been seized, and civilian shipping had ceased due to the war, the paucity of employment opportunities, along with the Yishuv’s identifying with Britain’s goals in the war, contributed to the fact that many Jewish seamen enlisted in the British navy and served during the war. In the shadow of the paralysis that the war engendered in civilian shipping, serving in the war under the British flag was an opportunity to firmly base the Yishuv in the maritime field, enhancing maritime professions and experience. One of the prominent marine fields that evolved during the war was fishery. Fishing in the Mediterranean was restricted and light fishing prohibited, but it was under these conditions that the groundwork was laid for fish farming (pisciculture); it developed greatly, not on the Mediterranean shores but rather near other internal sources of water independent of the sea. During the war, much experience was garnered in fish farming, which became a growing part of the fishery sector in Palestine and in Jewish fishery in particular. The state of the fishing settlements on the Mediterranean coast, however, was different. Settlement immediately prior to the war with insufficient experience, a depletion in manpower on the farms due to enlistment in the navy and the cessation of immigration, and disagreements between the settlement institutions about allocation of land and resources made the war years ones of crisis for the farms. With the sole exception of Sdot Yam, all farms along the Mediterranean abandoned fishery. In contrast, the fishing settlements along Lake Kinneret and the Hula Lake, which had begun to work in fishery before the war and in which maritime activity was not forbidden, had members consistently working in fishery, with the help of the Maritime

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Department. On these settlements, the fishery sector gradually grew stronger, becoming a decisive factor in the existence of maritime settlement in the region. In the field of training and education, attempts were made at the nautical school next to the Technion in Haifa, in the maritime sports associations, in maritime departments, and in different sports associations to continue training and even expand it. At the same time, the Jewish Agency’s Maritime Department, through the PML, continued its efforts to coordinate maritime training in these organizations under its auspices using a standardized plan—though these were not always successful. This was done, inter alia, in cooperation with Knesset Yisrael’s education department, which began to run a maritime education program during the war as part of the curriculum for the country’s schoolchildren. The department and the PML were involved in three prominent cultural enterprises that developed during the war—the Seafarers’ House, the Maritime Museum, and Sea Day, all meant to create encounters on the subject of the sea and to draw the populace closer to the sea and Jewish seafaring in particular. Training and civilian education in the maritime field were accompanied by military naval training during the war; in light of the strict limitations placed by the British on immigration, it was meant to prepare professional forces to accompany ships of illegal immigrants and help them disembark on the land’s shores. Later on, it was even meant to prepare members for battle against British forces. Thus were laid the first foundations for the central leadership’s military maritime understanding—one that related to a naval military force and control over the sea. The growing need to attend to future waves of immigration and the demands of the Mossad LeAliyah Bet led the Palmach to take part in naval training, first as a small sea company and, near the end of the war when its dimensions grew, as a sea company preparing itself for illegal immigration, which was renewed with the end of the Second World War. Thus, while the war posed massive setbacks for the Yishuv’s maritime activity, it proved a time of growth and expansion; the restrictions and obstacles the Zionists faced became advantages in the community’s quest for maritime sovereignty.

Chapter 5: The Road to Jewish Maritime Sovereignty, 1945 – 1948 In the period that followed the Second World War, when the dimensions of the tragedy that had befallen Europe’s Jews became known, the urgency of bringing survivors to the Land of Israel grew; the Zionist leadership prioritized immigration as one of its central objectives. After the war ended in the spring of 1945, the Labour government rose to power in Britain. Much to the dismay of the Zionist leadership, it maintained the White Paper policy held by the Conservative party since 1939—despite the Yishuv’s involvement in the war and the triumph over Nazi Germany and despite the catastrophic annihilation of many of Europe’s Jews, which was already well-known. Hundreds of thousands of displaced persons, housed in temporary camps in Europe, were pressing for a solution. Once the Zionist leadership—with David Ben-Gurion at its head—came to grips with the fact that British policy would not change, it prioritized immigration within the Zionist struggle, and made the decision to bring immigrants to Palestine illegally. During the three years that preceded the declaration of the state, immigration became the central arena of activity for the Yishuv and the Zionist movement in their efforts to establish a Jewish state.¹ In this state of affairs, the great challenge of bringing survivors to the land by sea was one of the central reasons for the growing sense of urgency in the maritime field and the attempts to expand a hold on it. In the years that followed the war and preceded the Jewish State, the Yishuv took pains to firmly cement its hold on the land’s ports, to rebuild commercial shipping and establish the first national shipping company, to expand its knowledge in fishery by founding a station for maritime and fisheries research, and to increase its maritime training and educational activities as well as its sea defense training, through the Palyam specifically.²

 Avigur et al., Hagana, 3:2:801– 7; Shapira, Ben-Gurion, 135 – 37. Nonetheless, Ben-Gurion’s attitude toward illegal immigration was ambivalent; it ranged from opposition, primarily because it undermined his political authority with the organizers of illegal immigration, to categorical support—but he most likely did this in large part for the purposes of public relations and political ammunition. For more on the tension between Ben-Gurion’s public commitment to the idea and his practical willingness to realize it over the years, see Tzahor, “Ben-Gurion.”  Bar-Kochba Meirovitz, “Summary of a Period in Jewish Maritime Enterprises” [in Hebrew], Yam, October–November 1946, 10. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110633528-007

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Jewish Activity in the Land of Israel’s Ports, 1945 – 1948 Between the end of the Second World War and the establishment of the state, the Haifa port retained its absolute primacy, processing more than 90 percent of import/export traversing the land’s ports. Jaffa and Tel Aviv’s ports continued to constitute only small percentages of the land’s port activity, but they did begin to recover, attempting to return to the status they had held before the war.³ Year  

Jaffa Port

Total Loading and Unloading (in Tons) Tel Aviv Port

, ,

, ,

Haifa Port ,,

Loading and unloading numbers for the Jaffa port in 1946 were equal to the unloading statistics at the port for the five war years; it reverted to the scope of activity it had had before the war—though not to those of pre-1936. In 1947, the Jaffa port’s numbers were equivalent to those of 1932, but not to the particularly high numbers of the years afterwards before the outbreak of the 1936 Arab Revolt. Nonetheless, it significantly exceeded the scope of activity from immediately prior to the war in the two years before it was closed: 262,087 tons in 1938 and 266,567 tons in 1939. In 1946, Tel Aviv processed nearly half of the amount that passed through the Jaffa port; in 1947, it was slightly more than half. Data for the Tel Aviv port in 1946 show that unloading and loading was equivalent to some 87 percent of the same during all five years of the Second World War, and the 1947 numbers show a similar percentage in relation to the figures for the two years preceding the war. While the Jaffa and Tel Aviv ports recovered following the war, then, their loading and unloading was negligible when compared to activity at Haifa’s port. After the war, discussions about defining the Marine Trust’s status and the Tel Aviv port’s legal and practical ownership were renewed. On April 1, 1946, a milestone in relations with the British government was recorded; the collection of profits from the Tel Aviv port was transferred to the auspices of the Marine Trust, making it the legal trustee for the movement of all goods and the holder of storekeeping fees. After a percentage was diverted to the Marine Trust’s coffers

 Avitsur, Rise and Fall, 177– 81; Government of Palestine, Department of Statistics, General Monthly Bulletin of Current Statistics of Palestine, January-February 1948, 20; Haifa port data for 1947 is only partial.

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for its part in collecting profits, the remaining revenues were transferred to Palestine Railways’ administration’s central treasury.⁴ Later in 1946, Tel Aviv’s port celebrated a “Triple Holiday”: A new passenger terminal was inaugurated across from the former Zion Gate. It could accommodate five hundred immigrants a day, and it contained offices for customs officials and passport control. The festive opening was held on November 11, with government representatives, Tel Aviv mayor Israel Rokach, and Yishuv institution representatives present. On that occasion, two additional events took place: two new barges for unloading cargo were first lowered into the sea, each able to load fifty tons of merchandise, and a ceremony was held in honor of the transport of the first citrus fruit crates to be sent by sea after the war.⁵ In 1947, some of the port’s equipment was replenished. Among other things, the wooden boats were exchanged for new boats made of iron, whose durability in water was better and capacity was greater. Four new cranes were also purchased by the port.⁶ During security crises on the Yishuv—such as when martial law was declared in Tel Aviv in March 1947—a siege was imposed on the Tel Aviv port and it was temporarily closed.⁷ The year 1948 saw new challenges at the port, and it became a crucial element in the land’s defense; it was the only Jewish gateway to the sea—and, being the only Jewish one, the most secure one. It was through the port that supplies reached the Yishuv—including weapons, which were essential for defending the land.⁸ A study of cargo movement at the Tel Aviv port shows that the two peaks in its years of activity were recorded during the Mandate period: The first was in 1939, four years after the port opened, with 254,000 tons. The second was 255,500 tons, recorded in 1948, the overall peak year in the transfer of cargo at the port. From that year on, there was a gradual decline in cargo movement at the port until its final closure in 1965.⁹ The Jaffa port resumed activities with the end of the Second World War; it was run solely by Arabs. With the Partition Plan on November 29, 1947 and during the first half of 1948, Jaffa’s ties with the world began to narrow, especially

 S. Pra’i, “Expansion of Powers of the Tel Aviv Port” [in Hebrew], Yam, March 1946, 3.  Bar-Kochba Meirovitz, “Summary of a Period in Jewish Maritime Enterprises” [in Hebrew], Yam, October–November 1946, 27.  Y. Ben-Avigdor, “Thirteen Years of the Tel Aviv Port” [in Hebrew], Yam, April–May 1949, 10; “At the Tel Aviv Port” [in Hebrew], Yam, January 1948, 18.  Yam [in Hebrew], February–March, 1947, 2.  Ironi, “Haganah,” in Lutsky, Tel Aviv Port; Saharov, “Weapons,” in Lutsky, Tel Aviv Port; Efrat, “Now,” in Lutsky, Tel Aviv Port.  Lutsky, Tel Aviv Port, 373.

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with regard to import, due to political and economic instability. The rioting at the time led to a complete disconnect between Jaffa and Tel Aviv, which became the two sides of a war front. Jaffa was surrounded by Jewish settlements on all sides; inside the city, different Arabs and volunteers such as Iraqi or Jordanian soldiers gathered—with no guiding hand, leading to total chaos. Most of the city’s residents, primarily those of the middle class and its wealthier residents, left in any way possible—sailing south toward Gaza and Port Said in Egypt or north to Tyre, Sidon, and Beirut.¹⁰ On May 13, 1948, one day before the declaration of the state, the Arab leadership in Jaffa signed a letter of surrender and the city and port were transferred to the authority of the Haganah.¹¹ After the conquest of Jaffa, its port became the southern anchorage of the Tel Aviv port and the two anchorages became one administrative authority.¹² Large amounts of merchandise began to arrive at the Haifa port near the end of the Second World War, and the shortage of Jewish workers at the port was perceptible, in particular because the military companies in which many veteran Jewish port workers had enlisted had not been immediately discharged.¹³ BenGurion devoted attention at the time to Haifa’s importance in the wake of the war and the need to strengthen the Jewish hold on it: “There will be a central port of the Mediterranean Sea, of the Land of Israel, and of the Near East in

 Radai, Palestinians, 136 – 67.  Avitsur, Rise and Fall, 184– 86. Jaffa surrendered after a difficult battle by the Irgun for the city between April 24 and 28, 1948, in which forty-one of the organization’s members were killed. Assurance that the British would not act against Irgun forces was given only after the Irgun agreed to transfer all positions caught in the city to the Haganah, which received the letter of surrender from the Arab leadership two weeks later, after tightening the siege on the city and capturing all of the nearby Arab villages right before the founding of the state. The vast majority of the city’s residents fled, and of the seventy thousand Arabs who were in the city right before the war, only four thousand remained. See Niv, Battle for Freedom, 98 – 111; Bandmann, “British Military.” On the disagreement about the Irgun’s attack on Jaffa in the historiography of the Land of Israel, see Peleg, “Battle for Jaffa,” 391– 98.  In the late 1948 citrus season, 150 workers from amongst the new immigrants and 150 Arabs —not professionals—were absorbed at the Jaffa port. It thus became possible to send one and a half million crates of citrus fruit from the Jaffa port during the 1948 – 1949 citrus season. For more, see Y. Ben-Avigdor, “Thirteen Years of the Tel Aviv Port” [in Hebrew], Yam, April – May 1949, 10.  Lecture about the situation after the war, most likely delivered by Dr. Wydra [in Hebrew], undated, S74/202, CZA, Jerusalem. At the Haifa port the numerical ratio of workers tended to favor the Arabs, but in the three years leading up to the establishment of the state the running of the port relied in no small part on its Jewish workers. Dan, Solel Boneh, 271.

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Haifa and if we remain in Haifa, the outlet to the sea will be in our hands.”¹⁴ The relative advantage of the Jews was their equipment operators, who became so crucial that they were able to entirely paralyze the port more effectively than thousands of Arabs, working manually, could. First an agricultural tractor on iron wheels and six carts were brought; in 1942, twelve tractors came at once. The first forklifts arrived in 1946 – 1947. At times Solel Boneh even leased equipment to the British administration at the port, thereby increasing its weight and influence. The takeover of the port’s mechanization helped Solel Boneh to remain at the port in the months that preceded the War of Independence. It took pains to ensure that work did not stop even briefly; when the road to the port was in danger, Solel Boneh made an armored vehicle available to the workers, which brought them to work even on the most difficult days.¹⁵ Around the time of the Partition Plan (November 29, 1947), the national institutions began to prepare for the transfer of authority of government institutions and facilities. As a result of their having triumphed during the acts of hostility, a company from the Palyam was selected to reinforce the Jewish presence at the Haifa port (as we will see below). Between April 19 and 22, 1948, the battle for Haifa raged; at its end, control of the city transferred to Jewish forces. This was, evidently, one of the primary factors in the government’s decision to ultimately hand Haifa’s port over to the municipality.¹⁶ The port’s affairs during the evacuation were slated to fall under the administration of the Haifa municipality, which would be responsible for receiving, keeping, and delivering cargo as well as for the maintenance and construction of the port and operating the tugboats, cranes, and other equipment. In exchange, the municipality would give the British army preference in these services in order to guarantee an efficient and speedy evacuation. Similarly, restrictions were delineated for activity during the evacuation period, and these were defined in separate clauses.¹⁷

 Protocol from the first meeting of Haifa’s planning committee [in Hebrew], 26 April 1944, Hadar Carmel, Haifa, ID 726, HMA, Haifa.  Yitzhak Altoya, Words of the Haifa Port Directorate 49 [in Hebrew], September 1963, 32; Eshel, Port of Haifa, 60 – 61.  From the British perspective, Haifa was the key to defense of the land, as well as to its evacuation. On Haifa’s central role in the process of the British evacuation of Palestine at the end of the Mandate, see Golani, “Civil War.” For more on integrated workplaces in Haifa, and the port in particular, during the War of Independence, see Goren, “Security Arrangements,” in Shiran, Naval Arena.  At first, the director of Palestine Railways raised the suggestion that the Chamber of Shipping should oversee the movement of cargo at the port with the departure of the British and during the evacuation, until a new administration was in place at the port. However, ultimately and after many different considerations, the High Commissioner decided that the port would be

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Mayor Shabtai Levy appointed a committee charged with, inter alia, overseeing the organized transfer of the Mandate government’s enterprises in the city, primarily these related to the port, the railroad, and customs. Amos Landman, secretary of Solel Boneh, and Yaakov Caspi, a member of the Chamber of Shipping and the Chamber of Commerce in Haifa, were designated to take responsibility for the port, along with British deputy director of the port, Harry Stevens, who offered his services after the English left the country.¹⁸ Taking into account the city’s condition and the important and vital military, political, and economic objectives—the port, the oil companies, the refineries, and the airport—the Haifa Workers’ Council executive committee decided to impose a regime of discipline in enlistment, defense, and labor. It was necessary to recruit workers for the factories, and the council demanded that the workplaces put aside 10 percent of their employees for work in essential factories. The Arab Higher Committee, conversely, made efforts to stop work in the refineries and to cease supplying oil to the Yishuv. Nine days before the declaration of the establishment of the state, David Ben-Gurion gave a power of attorney to the Situation Committee, authorizing it to immediately declare the draft of those aged twentysix to thirty-five to serve at the port, railroad, and other factories of national importance.¹⁹ But in actuality many difficulties arose in the recruitment of workers at the port. In a memorandum written by Amos Landman, he detailed: “For weeks now I have been running from institution to institution, asking for workers at the port. All have shown understanding and made promises but until now, to my great dismay, things have not yet been settled. Instead of fifteen hundred to two thousand essential workers for operating the port we have received a total of four hundred people.”²⁰ The British army commander at the port made clear to Landman that if the Jewish administration of the port could not organize the work based on both the civilian and military needs within a week, one thousand Egyptian workers would be brought in. In response, the efforts to recruit Jews to work at the port grew, and in the final weeks of British handed over to the municipality. See General Manager’s Office, Palestine Railways, Haifa, to director of the Chamber of Shipping, Haifa [in Hebrew], 31 March 1948, ID 9700, HMA, Haifa; agreement of the commander-in-chief of the British army that the port’s affairs during the evacuation would be the responsibility of Haifa’s municipality, 6 May 1948, ID 9700, HMA, Haifa; testimony of Yaakov Caspi about the transfer of operations at the port from the British Mandate to the Haifa municipality [in Hebrew], undated, ID 4123, HMA, Haifa. For more on the sequence of events in the ownership of the port after the British evacuated, see Ran, Ships and Wharf, 83 – 95.  Eshel, Port of Haifa, 81– 86. On Yaakov Caspi, see Ran, Ships and Wharf, 25 – 26.  Biletsky, Creativity and Struggle, 245 – 46.  Quoted in Eshel, Port of Haifa, 86.

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presence, a military labor brigade was established, which sent workers to the port. The recruitment of Jewish workers to the port and the increasing hold on it continued to occupy the Jewish leadership in Haifa until the evacuation of the final British soldier on June 30, 1948, a month and a half after the establishment of the State of Israel. At 11:30 am the British flag on the mast of the administrative building at the port was lowered and the flag of the State of Israel was raised, and Landman and Caspi assumed responsibility for the port. In the afternoon, a state ceremony, attended by Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion and other public leaders, was held; with that, the Haifa port was transferred to the hands of the State of Israel.²¹ Ben-Gurion’s words at the event display his clear understanding of the importance of the sea for the future of the state and the cementing of its strength. Among other things, he said: “This hour, the hour of Haifa’s final liberation, will be the glory of its residents and fighters. A great future has begun for our nation. We are not only involved in the land’s soil. We will also send hundreds and thousands of seafarers on our ships, which will traverse all the seas in the world. Because just as we were founded, in our first period, on agriculture, great conquests await us at sea, on which depend our national and political future.”²² To complete the national event and underscore the significance of the sea in the fledgling Jewish state, three of the State of Israel’s first warships appeared with flags raised—and, on their masts, the flag of the military navy was flown for the first time: a dark blue flag, with the Star of David inside a white triangle on its righthand edge.²³

 Testimony of Yaakov Caspi about the state ceremony in the presence of David Ben-Gurion [in Hebrew], undated, ID 4123, HMA, Haifa; thank-you letter from Minister of Transport David Remez to Shabtai Levy for his part in the temporary operations of the transportation and postal services in the Haifa region: David Remez, Minister of Transportation, the Kirya, Tel Aviv, to Shabtai Levy, Mayor of Haifa, Haifa [in Hebrew], 15 July 1948, ID 8792, HMA, Haifa. In actuality, the Haifa port was transferred from the administration of the Haifa municipality to the Ministry of Transportation in the interim government on July 22, 1948. See State of Israel, interim government, Haifa port administration, to Shabtai Levy, chairperson of municipality committee of Haifa, Haifa [in Hebrew], 22 July 1948, ID 8792, HMA, Haifa.  D. Shoval, “A Great Hour” [in Hebrew], Yam, June–July 1948, 3. In the same issue, dedicated entirely to the Haifa port, an editorial stated that the liberation of the Haifa port “will be recorded in the chronicles of our maritime enterprise as a highly significant historic date noting a decisive stage in our control of the sea and shore. On this day the port of Haifa was transferred to Jewish hands. From now, we command one of the pillars of our enterprise, for the grounding of our political and economic enterprises as one” (p. 2).  Amos Ayalon, “The Israeli Navy Rises Up from Underground” [in Hebrew], Yam, June–July 1948, 3 – 4; these were clandestine immigration ships that had been transformed to “warships”

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It was difficult to recruit workers for unloading at the port in the final days of British presence in the land; nonetheless, ultimately, the restriction of Jewish workers to the port and their continuous presence there directly before the state’s establishment due to crucial military and economic necessity contributed greatly to the transfer of the Haifa port solely to Jewish authority with the departure of the British from the land.

Zim: A Jewish National Shipping Company The absence of Jewish shipping during the war—both passenger ships and import/export on cargo ships—was noticeable. With the end of the war, the sea became the main immigration route, the primary channel of communication with the Jewish Diaspora and the lands across the sea—whose importance continued to grow, especially given the shortage of allies for the Zionist enterprise inside the land’s terrestrial borders.²⁴ The harsh reality of shipping at the end of the war, in which most of the Yishuv’s ships had been commandeered for the war and did not return (as we saw earlier), also created opportunities for Jewish shipping. Seamen hoped to exploit these opportunities and establish a Jewish national shipping company. The strength of the foremost competitors—Italy, Greece, and France—had diminished due to the war, and there was therefore a lacuna in commercial Mediterranean shipping that the seamen hoped to fill; there was a need for increased import due to dwindling supplies; the passenger traffic would soon grow with refugees coming after the war; tourism, it appeared, would develop with the peace expected after the war; plans were being made to lay additional gas lines on the eastern shores of the Mediterranean and primarily to Haifa and the refineries would be expanding, opening the door for Jewish transport of oil by sea.²⁵ Jewish shipping at the end of the war could rely on a trained band of seafarers, larger than it had been before the war, when Jewish ships had only two hundred Jews serving on board. With the aid of the nautical school in Haifa and the Hapoel, Sea Scouts, and Zevulun associations, hundreds of youth were trained to work at sea. At the end of the war, four hundred Jewish commanders and sailors worked on board foreign and domestic ships. These

and were henceforth known as the “Great Fleet.” See Aryeh Lova Eliav, interview [in Hebrew], 5 July 1994, HI, Haifa.  N. Wydra, untitled [in Hebrew], 1 August 1945, S74/202, CZA, Jerusalem.  F. O. Rogers, Port Manager, Memorandum on the present prospects for new steamship in Palestine, 21 August 1945, S74/56, CZA, Jerusalem.

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would constitute a significant reserve of trained Jewish manpower for a national shipping company when it opened.²⁶ Attempts to develop a Jewish shipping company were recorded before the Second World War as well. One prominent milestone was the meeting of Israeli delegates, members of the nineteenth Zionist Congress, who sailed to Lucerne aboard the ship Tel Aviv. The meeting took place on August 13, 1935, on the deck of the ship; Yishuv institutions were directed to take action to create a national shipping company.²⁷ The Zionist Congress in Lucerne resolved to establish a nautical division—the Maritime and Fisheries Department—within the Jewish Agency, and a call went out to foster, expand, and establish it firmly.²⁸ In late 1935, the National Council established a committee to explore the founding of a national shipping company; it was there that the division of responsibilities between institutions representing the Yishuv in general arose for discussion for the first time, though at that time no practical decisions were made.²⁹ One of the first people to promote the idea of a national shipping company to the Jewish Agency institutions was Bar-Kochba Meirovitz, the first director of the maritime division, who raised the subject in early 1937. He reasoned that it was time to realize the earlier decision and establish a national Jewish shipping company primarily for economic reasons—for the shipping of citrus fruits—and in so doing to minimize the community’s dependence on foreign ships.³⁰ The Jewish Agency’s priorities at the time were different; Jewish Agency treasurer Eliezer Kaplan rejected the proposal. When the idea of establishing a national shipping company was raised during the war, the possibility of merging the existing private companies into one large one working with the Yishuv institutions was discussed.³¹ Negotiations with Lloyd and Atid focused primarily on the degree of independence the private companies would have in the proposed structure. Eliminating state institutions’ ability to run a company based on state needs contradicted the Yishuv’s central goal in establishing the national shipping company: creating a company

 Zim Palestine Navigation Co. Ltd. [in Hebrew], 1945, S74/184/1, CZA, Jerusalem; Hayam, Ships’ Tales, 137.  For more on this, see chapter 3, above, p. 145.  Zionist Executive, Nineteenth Zionist Congress, 529.  Summary of protocol of the executive meeting with the interim committee for the establishment of a company for the development of shipping, Jerusalem [in Hebrew], 20 October 1935, J1/1872, CZA, Jerusalem.  B.-K. Meirovitz to Elazar Kaplan, Tel Aviv [in Hebrew], 13 January 1937, S11/44, CZA, Jerusalem.  Herman, Conquering a Route, 128 – 34.

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that could act out of national considerations, rather than economic-commercial ones. Were Yishuv members and Jews around the world to be approached in the name of a national shipping company tied to the Jewish Agency it would be possible to raise money; were it not run by national agencies, fundraising would be impossible.³² Private companies were being asked, in effect, to relinquish their commercial independence and merge with a national company in which they had no priority in making decisions, something they found difficult to stomach.³³ The dispute between the national institutions and the private companies did not relate only to the question of shipping; it reflected the ideological conflict between two central worldviews on the Yishuv’s social order and desired market structure. One perspective was the social-service perspective; the other, the capitalist-bourgeois consumer approach. Each conveyed its view of the goals of Zionist realization in equality, justice, distribution of resources, class relations, and more.³⁴ The bourgeois in the Yishuv viewed Zim’s establishment as a further example of the socialist left, which led the Yishuv, using the Jewish Agency’s funds to take control of economic sectors while pushing out private enterprise.³⁵ The private shipping companies claimed that they had laid the groundwork for Jewish shipping prior to the war, with ships sailing regularly between Palestine, the Near East, and Europe, serving passengers and merchants with integrity. The percentage of Jewish employees, they said, was gradually growing. Furthermore, their service was national by design and in essence: they gave services for the needs of the Yishuv. They had invested personal fortune without aid from the national coffers; nevertheless, they had allowed the Yishuv leaders to use their achievements for the purposes of national propaganda, despite significant losses. In their words, at the end of the war, when the time came to renew the shipping

 Protocol from meeting of the Palestine Maritime League and the Jewish Agency’s Maritime and Fisheries Department and the proxies of the shipping companies, Tel Aviv [in Hebrew], 10 May 1943, S74/184/2, CZA, Jerusalem.  Protocol from meeting between the PML and Maritime and Fisheries Department and the proxies of the shipping companies, Haifa [in Hebrew], 18 July 1943, S74/184/2, CZA, Jerusalem. For an analysis of the different approaches to the establishment of the national company, see Baruch Howard, “Kedmah in the Tumult of Views—A World of Contradictions” [in Hebrew], Davar, February 17, 1948.  The stage for the ideological conflict was set in the Ottoman period and early in British reign. See Lissak, Shapira, and Cohen, Jewish Community, 2:173 – 88. On the conflicts during the Mandate period from the perspective of the Manufacturers’ Association, see Metzer, “Manufacturers’ Association.”  “Zim—A Tool in the Hands of the Left for Overtaking the Shipping Sector” [in Hebrew], haMashḳif, May 23, 1945.

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that had existed in peacetime, logic and justice dictated that national assistance was due these private companies, and especially Palestine Maritime Lloyd Ltd. and Atid, who had rights as pioneers in Jewish shipping. They felt that the national institutions had a duty, therefore, to reinforce the existing shipping and expand it rather than prioritize a new and inexperienced company over the other, older ones.³⁶ Unable to bridge the gaps and form a basis for joint activity, the Jewish Agency chose to establish a national shipping company without including the existing ones. The company was tasked with working on shipping lines that would promote the development of the Yishuv in the Land of Israel based on national considerations: the transportation channels of Jewish immigration to Israel and tourism; freight lines of raw materials crucial to industry and construction which were lacking in the community’s economy; export of citrus fruits and industrial products; shorelines; and oil transport. It was resolved that the Jewish Agency must guarantee the national Jewish character of the shipping company and the Jewish ships it owned according to the following criteria: (1) Jewish employees; (2) a Jewish flag; (3) Jewish ownership; (4) use of products from the country; and (5) sailing along lines that were crucial to the Yishuv.³⁷ With these principles in mind, Zim, the national shipping company, was founded on June 7, 1945, and registered with the government as Zim—Palestine Navigation Company Limited.³⁸ The company, according to its founders’ resolution, was meant to serve as a national tool, developing Jewish shipping based on Jewish nautical transport needs and constituting a body that united efforts to revive Jewish shipping. Three public bodies—the Jewish Agency, the PML,³⁹

 Moshe Shalosh, “This Is Not the Way to Conquer the Sea” [in Hebrew], ha-Boḳer, May 15, 1945; Zeev Hayam, “National Whitewash against Private Enterprise” [in Hebrew], ha-Boḳer, May 16, 1945.  Shmuel Tolkowsky, chairman of the subcommittee on maritime affairs, to David Ben-Gurion, chairman of the Jewish Agency’s planning committee [in Hebrew], 13 April 1945, S74/160, CZA, Jerusalem.  “National Shipping Company Zim Founded” [in Hebrew], Mishmar, May 4, 1945; for a photocopy of the registration in the companies registry, see Zelinger and Douek, Zim, 10. The name, meaning “large ships,” was suggested by David Remez, later Minister of Transportation in Israel’s government. The name comes from the Bible: “But ships (tzim) shall come from the coast of Kittim…” (Num. 24:24); “In that day shall messengers go forth from before Me in ships (tzim) to make the confident Ethiopians afraid…” (Ezek. 30:9). See Herman, Menahem Rivlin, 81– 82.  After Zim’s establishment it became clear that the PML’s contribution to the company’s continued existence would be minimal. In contrast with the Jewish Agency and the Histadrut, the PML was nearly devoid of money to invest in establishing the company. See Eshel, Campaign, 41– 43.

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and Nahshon—were the founding parties, with the Jewish Agency holding special rights to Zim as the representative of Jewish statehood. The company was founded with shared capital of 500,000 Palestine pounds. The capital paid was, in fact, 190,000 Palestine pounds, of which 100,000 came from the Jewish Agency, Nahshon paid 80,000, and the PML 10,000. The company’s management was comprised of thirteen people, six from the Jewish Agency, six from the Histadrut, and one from the PML. The management was composed of four people: Hillel Dan, from Solel Boneh; Gusta Strumpf-Rechav, CEO of Nahshon; and two Jewish Agency representatives—David Baharal, the Jewish Agency treasurer, and Dr. Naftali Wydra, Haifa manager of the Jewish Agency’s Maritime and Fisheries Department, who would serve as Zim’s executive director for twenty-one years.⁴⁰

Partnership with Harris and Dixon and the Purchase of the Kedmah It quickly became apparent that purchasing ships in postwar conditions would be impossible without direct aid from the British government in Palestine and London. It was also clear that in the first phase, it would be wise to partner with a foreign company, using its experience to overcome the hurdles inherent in founding a shipping company. The assistance of a foreign company was necessary for purchasing a ship, especially given the lack of ships after the war and their high price. In the postwar period, it was impossible to buy ships or to build new ones; shipyards around the world were overrun with orders for merchant fleets from veteran maritime countries that had suffered great losses. It was clear to the national institutions, then, that used ships must be bought. It appeared that the best way to do so was by partnering with a well-connected and reputable British company. But in the postwar atmosphere, people who would “risk” becoming involved with a national Jewish shipping company were few and far between.⁴¹ Zim also understood that there were many advantages to international partnerships in shipping. When transporting merchandise between at least two different countries, each country could demand a portion of the transport of imported and exported merchandise, such that the exporting and importing nations took part equally and fairly in the maritime transport. Thus, countries with a nautical heritage could facilitate things for the younger countries, hoping

 Sources about the chronicles of Zim are few: Encyclopaedia Judaica, 3rd edition (1974), s.v. “Zim”; Bar-Tikva, Zim; Yarkoni, 75 Years; Yarkoni, The Sea; Zelinger and Douek, Zim.  Hayam, Sea Routes, 14; Yarkoni, 75 Years, 50 – 52.

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to break into the world of marine transport, to enter the larger world of shipping, and the new countries benefited from the financial, professional, and political support. At the same time, the veteran countries safeguarded themselves against competition with the younger ones. Zim saw international cooperation as an essential way to develop Jewish national shipping, as long as that cooperation guaranteed a number of basic national principles such as a Jewish crew, a Jewish flag, and so forth.⁴² After a number of attempts to make contact with existing shipping companies, Zim connected with a veteran London company, Harris and Dixon. The company dealt with insurance, primarily maritime insurance, and also operated a small ship agency. The main stockholders were Lord Wimborne and Lord Kilmarnock, well-respected names amongst British nobility at the time. The fact that an English company was willing to enter into a partnership with Zim went a long way in its dealings with the Mandate government.⁴³ Harris and Dixon agreed with Zim on the establishment of a subsidiary with shared equity in the amount of 250,000 Palestine pounds. The subsidiary, “Kedem Palestine Line,” would procure a ship according to the following principles: Both companies would take equal part in the subsidiary’s equity. Each would have the same number of directors. The chairman would either be a neutral figure or be selected on rotation from the two companies’ representatives. However, the management must relate to the company as a Jewish national one; the practical management of the subsidiary would consist of three people, two of whom were selected by Zim and one of whom was chosen by Harris and Dixon. The Harris and Dixon director would be responsible primarily for technical elements. The company’s seat and place of work would be in Haifa. Harris and Dixon would act as managing agents for a period of ten years; they would take upon themselves the technical and professional responsibility for the joint company during that period. The subsidiary would be registered in Palestine and its ships would fly the flag of the Land of Israel; those working on

 N. Wydra, Land of Israel maritime transportation [in Hebrew], 24 September 1946, S74/56, CZA, Jerusalem.  Bar-Kochba Meirovitz to Zim members [in Hebrew], 21 July 1946, S74/153, CZA, Jerusalem; protocol from Zim board meeting [in Hebrew], 11 September 1946, S74/153, CZA, Jerusalem. Contact with the company was made through Menahem Rivlin, secretary of the PML, who was in London at the time. His friend Yosef Segal, a close friend of Lord Wimborne, connected Harris and Dixon with Meirovitz and Kaplan, Zim’s representatives. For more, see Herman, Conquering a Route, 134– 38.

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the ships and the company’s employees would be Jewish, if at all possible.⁴⁴ The contract signed between the English partners and Zim on the founding of Kedem stated explicitly that “both partners will use their rights in the company to guarantee a Jewish character as a Jewish line of ships that will employ Jewish employees and work in the service of the Yishuv or its interests.”⁴⁵ In July 1946, right after the establishment of Kedem, the new partnership purchased the Kedah. The partners’ share in the purchase was equal; it was resolved that both companies would invest equally in repair and renovation expenses and that it would be deployed on the Haifa–Marseilles line.⁴⁶ The ship was renamed Kedmah—meaning eastward, indicating the direction of the Land of Israel, as in the Bible: “You shall spread out to the west and to the east (kedmah), to the north and to the south” (Gen. 28:14). The small alteration in the ship’s original name making it a word with biblical meaning, one that related to the Land of Israel—the land of the Bible, the ideal of two thousand years of exile, the location of Zionism’s realization—was an attempt to create an etymological connection between the ship and its role in the service of the state.⁴⁷ The Kedah ⁴⁸ had originally been built in 1927 in the Vickers shipyard, located in the Port of Barrow in northwest England, for Straits Steamship, affiliated with the prestigious British firm Blue Funnel Line. It began its service on the Singapore–Penang (today George Town) line. The ship was built for quick passenger service at short distances (under four hundred miles) in the protected waters of the Far East. The ship sailed for twelve years, transporting passengers, cargo, and mail. With the outbreak of the Second World War, the Kedah was drafted for use in the British navy and it took part in a number of evacuations, including that of Singapore. Though it was never hit during the war, strikes nearby severely rattled the complex and delicate machinery and its speed fell from eighteen

 F. Kaplan to Lord Viscount Wimborne, director of Harris and Dixon [in Hebrew], London, 26 June 1946, P-18/920, ISA, Jerusalem; Harris and Dixon Ltd. to Kaplan, Jewish Agency for Israel, confirming the agreement [in Hebrew], 27 June 1946, P-18/920, ISA, Jerusalem; protocol from Zim board meeting [in Hebrew], 11 September 1946, S74/153, CZA, Jerusalem; Zim—Palestine Navigation Ltd. to the commissioner of foreign currency [in Hebrew], 26 May 1952, GL-12/46233, ISA, Jerusalem; the Jewish crew included graduates of the nautical school in Haifa, graduates of maritime training in athletic associations, and Jewish young men who had served in the Royal Navy during the Second World War. See “A Jewish Passenger Ship in the Mediterranean Sea” [in Hebrew], Hegeh, April 23, 1947.  Bar-Kochba Meirovitz, “The Deliberations of Jewish Shipping” [in Hebrew], Davar, September 10, 1947.  Bar-Kochba Meirovitz to Zim members [in Hebrew], 21 July 1946, S74/153, CZA, Jerusalem.  For more on the link to the east, see Zalmona and Manor-Friedman, To the East.  The name Kedah came from the northern Malay Peninsula.

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knots to seven.⁴⁹ In early 1946 it was returned to the Vickers shipyard, to the dock in which it had been built twenty years earlier. Here it was discharged from service in the British navy and put up for sale.⁵⁰ The purchase of the Kedah was conducted on the basis of an examination of the ship performed by experts from Harris and Dixon. The foremost condition for the ship’s low price was that the buyer could not open the machinery for inspection; the ship was sold as is, after an external check only. The ship had a capacity of 2,500 tons and the agreed-upon price was 75,000 Palestine pounds.⁵¹ As we will soon see, the cost of the repairs necessary to prepare the ship and the amount of time the repairs took were far greater than the original assessment, and put the question of national maritime independence to the test at its very inception.

The Technical Trial: The Repairs in Antwerp The Kedmah’s preparation for passenger service required repairs, something that was possible only in England or Belgium in the days following the war. Harris and Dixon preferred Antwerp, Belgium, feeling that there it would both cost less and take less time. At the recommendation of Harris and Dixon, the Kedmah was delivered to the Guthrie and Morduch shipyard in Antwerp in July 1946. Based on the shipyard’s preliminary calculation, the repairs and installation were projected to cost 65,000 Palestine pounds, not including parts that would need to be changed, whose cost was not figured into the projected budget. Installation was projected to take between four and six months.⁵² Antwerp was considered ideal in terms of working conditions in Europe at the time; nevertheless, two months after the Kedmah arrived, complications arose and a series of mishaps overshadowed the euphoria. The pace of the work was slower than had been promised; it appeared that the repairs’ cost would be higher than the original quote. The patience of Zim’s board members began to wear thin. The deadline for the preparation of what would be the na-

 A knot is the unit of speed of a nautical mile (1,853 meters) per hour.  Yarkoni, 75 Years, 50 – 52; Herman, Conquering a Route, 134– 37.  “Din ṿe-Ḥeshbon shel ha-Ṿaada le-Ḥaḳirat Parashat Ḳedmah,” 11 October 1948, S30/3143, CZA, Jerusalem.  Bar-Kochba Meirovitz to Zim members [in Hebrew], 21 July 1946, S74/153, CZA, Jerusalem; Bar-Kochba Meirovitz, “Parashat ha-Oniya ‘Ḳedmah,’” 7 December 1947, S30/3143, CZA, Jerusalem.

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tional shipping company’s first passenger ship was postponed time and again; the end was nowhere in sight.⁵³ It was during this period that the relationship between Zim’s management and the English partners also became strained. Zim claimed that it was not being given clear information about the work’s progress and repair deadlines and that the bills for repairs that came from time to time greatly exceeded the projected price. Harris and Dixon’s representatives in Antwerp and its members on the board, it was felt, did not give straightforward answers about the situation.⁵⁴ There was a sense of great unrest amongst the Zim heads, some of whom departed for Antwerp to take a closer look at what was going on. A description from Gusta Strumpf-Rechav, director of Nahshon, reporting on the situation in April 1947, nine months after the ship arrived for repairs, illustrates the sense of hopelessness at Zim: I found a situation that was not good: a deterioration in the relations between our people and the partners’ people…. Alan [the Harris and Dixon foreman] has not been here for more than two weeks. The work is in a discouraging state. A strange slowness and a complete lack of organization. They build and demolish, build and demolish…. I went over the entire ship again today, from top to bottom. In the lounge they are putting down a new floor, the electrical piping has not been arranged yet, the stairs are being repaired and created, the cabins are not yet finished, the kitchen arrangements are in complete disarray, the employees’ quarters are not finished, there is still no light, there is still no water, there is still no paint. On board the ship the picture is the same. There are two hundred workers or more, with no supervision, with no organization. The decks in the stern have only external walls, the davits⁵⁵ and the lifeboats have not yet been connected, but Mr. Austin [the head engineer from Harris and Dixon] stresses, “But a lot of work has been done.”⁵⁶

The English partner’s response to the allegations was that several things must be taken into account—postwar events in global shipping in general, postwar events in the Antwerp port in particular, and the ship’s objective condition. They claimed that the hard winter that year (1946) both slowed the work and  Gusta Strumpf-Rechav, Nahshon Ltd., to the board of Zim Ltd., “Toldot ha-Ḳniya ṿe-Tiḳun haOniya ‘Ḳedmah,’” 3 August 1947, container 23164, Zim Company Archives (hereafter, ZCA), Haifa. This detailed report, written by Nahshon’s director about the sequence of events in Antwerp, shows that the ship was meant to be ready in November of 1946, but a series of repeated postponements led to its remaining in the shipyard for repairs for a full year.  Bar-Kochba Meirovitz to Dr. B. Yoseph [in Hebrew], 15 June 1947, container 23164, ZCA, Haifa; “Kedem’s Response” [in Hebrew], Haaretz, September 10, 1947; “”Din ṿe-Ḥeshbon shel ha-Ṿaada le-Ḥaḳirat Parashat Ḳedmah,” 11 October 1948, S30/3143, CZA, Jerusalem.  Cranes upon which the lifeboats hang.  Gusta Strumpf-Rechav, Nahshon Ltd., to the board of Zim Ltd., “Toldot ha-Ḳniya ṿe-Tiḳun haOniya ‘Ḳedmah,’” 19 April 1947, container 23164, ZCA, Haifa.

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made it more expensive; that there were delays in the supply of parts from the Vickers shipyard because of manufacturing conditions; that there was a dearth of raw materials; that strikes and breaks in manufacturing had taken place— all leading to the fact that ships that needed an overhaul were delayed by many months.⁵⁷ The ship itself, they claimed, had undergone unforeseen work; an increase in the number of passengers on the ship meant many internal changes and the Kedmah’s machinery, which had been damaged in the Second World War, was delicate and very complicated, and much time was necessary to fix it.⁵⁸ Indeed, in order to make it fit for service in the Mediterranean Sea, the ship had no small amount of work done. Its gross tonnage was increased from 2,500 tons to 3,500, and it was outfitted for 350 passengers (as opposed to the 250 it had held previously) and 400 tons of cargo. Ultimately the ship spent a year in the Belgian shipyard, four months of which were waiting for parts and two months of which were strikes, all at a cost of 280,000 Palestine pounds—more than four times the amount originally quoted.⁵⁹ In July 1947, with the threat of a new strike in Antwerp, and despite the fact that the Zim staff on site—even the Harris and Dixon staff—was still not satisfied with the state of the ship, they all chose to remove the ship from Antwerp and complete the repairs in Palestine. The ship set sail from Antwerp on July 16, 1947, bound for Palestine via London.⁶⁰

The Social Trial: The First Journey and the Crew Crisis Aside from the objective difficulties caused by global market conditions after the war, tension existed between the crew members aboard the ship on its first journey. According to the agreement with Harris and Dixon, priority was given to Jewish workers. The entire crew on board the ship, composed by the Seamen’s

 Naftali Wydra, Speech given by Wydra at the Seafarers’ House, Haifa [in Hebrew], 5 September 1947, container 23164, ZCA, Haifa; Herman, Conquering a Route, 138 – 39.  Gusta Strumpf-Rechav, Nahshon Ltd., to the board of Zim Ltd., “Toldot ha-Ḳniya ṿe-Tiḳun haOniya ‘Ḳedmah,’” 3 August 1947, container 23164, ZCA, Haifa; Bar-Kochba Meirovitz, “The Deliberations of Jewish Shipping” [in Hebrew], Davar, September 10, 1947.  “Din ṿe-Ḥeshbon shel ha-Ṿaada le-Ḥaḳirat Parashat Ḳedmah,” 11 October 1948, S30/3143, CZA, Jerusalem; Yarkoni, 75 Years, 51.  Naftali Wydra, Speech given by Wydra at the Seafarers’ House, Haifa [in Hebrew], 5 September 1947, container 23164, ZCA, Haifa. On departure, the ship’s refrigerator did not work; the meat spoiled on the way and was thrown into the sea in London. See “Din ṿe-Ḥeshbon shel ha-Ṿaada le-Ḥaḳirat Parashat Ḳedmah,” 11 October 1948, S30/3143, CZA, Jerusalem.

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Association in Haifa, was Jewish, save for the key positions on the ship—the chief engineer, his assistant, and the captain—who were chosen by the English partners due to a lack of suitable Jewish candidates. During the journey to London, it became clear that there was distrust and a lack of coordination between the two groups. This was especially noticeable in the ship’s engine room, a place where strict professionalism and cooperation were essential; there, in particular, the two staffs working together butted heads time and again. The main claim on the part of the Jewish sailors was that the ship that had departed from Antwerp was barely seaworthy and that the English were responsible for its technical conditions; for their part, the English claimed that the ship had departed once it had all of the requisite permits and all that remained were minor repairs, meaning that the journey should be feasible.⁶¹ As we will soon see, the conflicts and recriminations would characterize the Kedmah for an extended period of time and put it to additional tests as time went on. A description of the ship’s arrival in London demonstrates the central place the ship had begun to take in the Jewish national consciousness. The ceremony raising the Jewish flag on the mast in London’s port created quite a stir: Thousands crowded onto the shores of the Thames to watch the ceremony of raising the Jewish flag on the ship’s mast. This was the first time in history that seamen’s orders were given in Hebrew at the Thames dock. The appearance of the lovely Jewish ship with the Jewish crew on the Thames made a strong impression not only on the Jewish groups but also on the British trade and shipping classes.⁶²

However, in the shadow of the excitement at the appearance of the first Jewish national ship, the misfortunes that accompanied it from its first voyage and the tension between the crew members did not fade. After four days in London, the ship departed for Palestine. Two days out of the Tel Aviv port, there was a serious incident in the central machinery system—saltwater got into the steam system, the lights on the ship went out, and the ship stopped moving. Beforehand, the refrigerators had ceased to work and a separate problem had caused the kitchen’s ovens to stop working. The journey became unpleasant: “In the last days of the journey, in the Mediterranean midsummer heat, there was no water for bathing. There was almost no water left for cooking.”⁶³ Blame was cast for willful

 Bar-Kochba Meirovitz, “Parashat ha-Oniya ‘Ḳedmah,’” 7 December 1947, S30/3143, CZA, Jerusalem; “Din ṿe-Ḥeshbon shel ha-Ṿaada le-Ḥaḳirat Parashat Ḳedmah,” 11 October 1948, S30/ 3143, CZA, Jerusalem.  Yam [in Hebrew], July 1947, 18.  Herman, Conquering a Route, 139.

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destruction: the English claimed that the saltwater was deliberately introduced into the system by the Jews; the Jews asserted that the English had done it to cover for the poor quality of the repairs in Antwerp. As the ship neared the shores of the Land of Israel, it was clear that it was in need of technical repair—and, no less, social repair.⁶⁴

Kedmah’s Arrival at the Tel Aviv Port Expectations for the Kedmah’s arrival in the Land of Israel were high. In advance of its coming, Kedem turned to travel agencies to encourage people to sail on it— attesting to the special place accorded to the ship in the establishment of a Jewish merchant fleet: We are pleased to announce that we have inaugurated our regular bi-weekly service between the Land of Israel and Limassol–Guinea and Marseilles on our ship the Kedmah…. The ship was completely restored before it began its new service. We spared no effort to meet the needs and desires of the Jewish public in the Land of Israel…. The ship will hoist the flag of the Land of Israel and the crew and housekeeping workers are Jewish. We hope that you will pay special attention to our line in directing your passengers to the service and help us establish, with us, the Jewish merchant fleet…. The Jewish crew was selected very carefully in order to guarantee efficient and courteous service and we are confident that a ship of comfortable, speedy, and satisfactory sailing ability will be available to you and the passengers.⁶⁵

On July 28, 1947, the Kedmah arrived at the port in Tel Aviv.⁶⁶ The arrival of the national shipping company’s first ship was heralded by great excitement and national pride.⁶⁷ This was an event on a national scale and Yishuv dignitaries from the country were invited. Tel Aviv dressed for the occasion; the port was decorated with flags. The day’s symbolism was evident: it was the ninth of Av,

 Bar-Kochba Meirovitz, “Parashat ha-Oniya ‘Ḳedmah,’” 7 December 1947, S30/3143, CZA, Jerusalem.  Dr. Naftali Wydra, “Ḳedem Sherut Yami Erets Yiśrael Baam,” 13 July 1947, circular no. 1 to all travel and tourist agencies, S30/3143, CZA, Jerusalem.  Jewish Agency Aliyah Department, Tel Aviv Aliyah Bureau, Report on the ship’s movement in the port, serial no. 1, The Kedmah [in Hebrew], 27 July 1947, S6/4219, CZA, Jerusalem. Aboard the ship were 190 immigrants, tourists, and tourists returning from overseas. “We Are Deficient at Sea and We Must Win at Sea” [in Hebrew], Davar, July 28, 1947, 1.  Chanan Yoseph, “A Big Day for the Yishuv’s Shipping with the Arrival of Kedmah—The Jewish Passenger Ship Arrives at the Tel Aviv Port” [in Hebrew], Mishmar, July 28, 1947; “We Will Happily Greet the Kedmah” [in Hebrew], Yam, July 1947, 2.

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the symbol of destruction; the Kedmah’s arrival was a symbol of consolation and renewal. The arrival of the first Jewish ship to be owned by Yishuv institutions at the shores of Tel Aviv, the first Jewish city, the central symbol of the independence of the Jewish Yishuv in the Land of Israel, reflected great hope for the Yishuv’s maritime sovereignty. Thousands crowded onto the Tel Aviv shore from the early morning to see the historic event.⁶⁸ Five airplanes (Pipers) belonging to the Aviron company set out to greet the ship at sea, with Jewish Agency board members —including Yitzhak Gruenbaum; Golda Meyerson (Meir); David Remez, chairman of the National Council; and Aviron director Uri Michaeli—on board.⁶⁹ The symbolism was intense: aerial sovereignty greeted newly established maritime sovereignty. Two expressions of “independence without place”—in air and at sea— met, escalating the sense of imminent national independence. Journalists who came to cover the event were given guided tours of the ship and the press’s descriptions reflect their excitement.⁷⁰ The Yishuv’s maritime independence was tested from the very moment of the Kedmah’s arrival in the Land of Israel. Two days after the Kedmah’s arrival it was meant to depart for Zurich for a meeting of the Zionist General Council with the Yishuv leadership on its deck. But the ship’s technical supervisor from Harris and Dixon announced that the ship’s condition made it impossible to sail; it must be repaired.⁷¹ That the ship could not take the Yishuv leadership due to its poor state caused considerable embarrassment. Criticism of Zim and the ship was voiced, and echoed in the press at the time.⁷² Critiques from the circles related to the foreign and private companies—that the formation of the Jewish national shipping company would endanger their status and income—arose once again.⁷³

 “Kedmah Anchored Yesterday in Tel Aviv for the First Time” [in Hebrew], Haaretz, July 28, 1947. Of the 190 passengers on board, 110 were immigrants who had survived the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.  In July 1936, at the height of the Arab Revolt in Palestine, the Jewish Agency, the National Council, and the Histadrut established Aviron, which was the first Jewish airline. See “Aviron” on the Israeli Air Force website: http://iaf.org.il/3012– 4400-en/IAF.aspx.  “We Are Deficient at Sea and We Must Win at Sea” [in Hebrew], Davar, July 28, 1947.  “The machinery did not work properly. The ‘heart’ of the ship needed emergency surgery.” See Herman, Conquering a Route, 140; the passengers to the Zionist Congress in Zurich travelled by air at the last minute. See V. Groman, “What Came Before the Kedmah” [in Hebrew], ha-Boḳer, November 2, 1947, 2.  “How Kedmah’s Company Works” [in Hebrew], Haaretz, August 27, 1947, 3; K. Hilb, “Kedmah in Murky Waters” [in Hebrew], ha-Boḳer, September 1, 1947, 2.  K. Hilb “The Ship That Bears Their Crime” [in Hebrew], ha-Boḳer, November 12, 1948, 3 – 4.

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The Kedmah managed to make two rounds of voyages by mid-September 1947 before it docked at the Haifa shipyard for repairs that took four months, ending mid-January 1948. Over time, it became clear that the ship was in trouble: it was consuming far too much water and fuel; the boilers and machinery constantly had sediment, posing a threat to the turbines; the freshwater containers were insufficient for the boilers and passengers; and the pumps and auxiliary machinery on the ship were not working correctly. An engineer who examined the ship in Haifa determined that the repairs in Antwerp had evidently not been completed and that the crew had also not tended to the ship properly while sailing.⁷⁴ Despite the complications that were Zim’s lot in Kedmah’s early days—and perhaps even because of them—the company’s heads chose to give the seamen better wages. This, they claimed, was in order to highlight the advantage of employees on a state ship, thus fortifying the Jewish naval workforce and Zim’s status as a leading company in the field of shipping. The base selected used the conditions given to British seamen at the time, with additional medical insurance in a health fund subsidized by the company, a family allowance in accordance with the cost of living in the Land of Israel, and a provident fund. These three expenses made the company’s expenses for wages 25 percent higher than those of other British ships, 250 – 300 percent relative to Italian or Greek ships. The average expenditure of a shipboard worker, including vacation, social allocation, cost of living allowance, and economic expenses reached some 500 Palestine pounds a year.⁷⁵ The conditions defined for workers on the state shipping company’s first ship was without a doubt an important precedent that accompanied Zim’s salaries with the expansion of its activities later on. The Kedmah’s arrival in the Land of Israel did not improve relations with the English partners. In fact, it was quite the opposite, certainly in the face of the repeated mishaps on the ship after it arrived.⁷⁶ The Zim board blamed Harris and Dixon for the mechanical defects on the ship by virtue of its technical re “Din ṿe-Ḥeshbon shel ha-Ṿaada le-Ḥaḳirat Parashat Ḳedmah,” 11 October 1948, S30/3143, CZA, Jerusalem.  Naftali Wydra, Speech given by Wydra at the Seafarers’ House, Haifa [in Hebrew], 5 September 1947, container 23164, ZCA, Haifa. The contract was signed by one hundred employees of the Kedmah. Wydra noted that the Jewish ship supported one hundred Jewish families, a number that was, in his opinion, proof that the sea, and shipping in particular, could support and help sustain a large settlement—a response to those wondering whether the sea could support families.  Bar-Kochba Meirovitz, Maritime and Fisheries Department, to Segel [in Hebrew], 10 December 1947, container 23164, ZCA, Haifa; unsigned (most probably Naftali Wydra) to David HaCohen [in Hebrew], 16 December 1947, container 23164, ZCA, Haifa.

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sponsibility; the English partners pointed the finger at the inexperienced Jewish crew members who did not know, they claimed, how to care for the machinery in a professional manner and thus caused the ship’s shutdown. After the Kedmah’s arrival the disagreements focused on the supervision for the continued repairs— who the supervisor would answer to, where the repairs would take place, who was considered a recognized professional who could be trusted to give an unbiased opinion.⁷⁷ The great suspicion led to a strike amongst the Jewish crew members on the Kedmah, who announced that they would not work with the British mechanics on the ship; they felt the British employees were endangering the lives of the crew and passengers.⁷⁸ From here to discussions of dismantling the partnership the distance was a short one. First it was Zim that wanted to dismantle the partnership, as long as it received the funds it had invested in the ship in return. But Zim slowly backed down when the English partners showed flexibility in their willingness to employ more Jewish workers on the ship. Furthermore, the English bureaucracy’s effect was felt less and less.⁷⁹ An important milestone in Zim’s growing desire not to relinquish the Kedmah took place on May 14, 1948, the day that the State of Israel’s independence was declared. On that day, the ship anchored in the Marseilles port, and was apparently the first ship to lower the Mandatory flag and raise the Zim flag, the flag of Israel’s merchant fleet.⁸⁰ From that day on, the idea of a Jewish ship, owned by the nascent state’s shipping company, took on monumental national significance. That very month, Captain Robert Miller of Zim was selected as the ship’s captain in the place of the English captain, David Morrison, who had first held that position on behalf of Harris and Dixon. Miller was a trustee of Zim and considered a first-rate professional.⁸¹ The remainder of the ship’s English crew was also replaced by Jewish seamen and when the ship returned to full service some improvement was felt on the ship and in its service, though the ship’s condition

 Bar-Kochba Meirovitz, “Parashat ha-Oniya ‘Ḳedmah,’” 7 December 1947, S30/3143, CZA, Jerusalem; Naftali Wydra to David HaCohen [in Hebrew], 16 February 1948, container 23164, ZCA, Haifa.  K. Arkin, Haifa Workers’ Council, Association of Jewish Captains, Officers, and Sailors, Haifa, to Zim Ltd. management [in Hebrew], 14 November 1947, container 23164, ZCA, Haifa; “The Kedmah Crew Is on Strike” [in Hebrew], Kol ha-Am, November 30, 1947.  Herman, Conquering a Route, 143 – 45.  Hayam, Ships’ Tales, 22– 23; Hayam, “Kedmah: Zim’s First Ship” [in Hebrew], Zim 1, 1971, 34.  On Miller, see details in chapter 3, page 164– 165. With Captain Miller’s knowledge, weapons were smuggled on board the Kedmah from Marseilles to the Land of Israel. For more, see Benny Telem, interview [in Hebrew], 11 August 1994, HI, Haifa.

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later on was still unsatisfactory and critiques of its condition continued to be voiced.⁸²

Under Scrutiny: The Kedmah Review Committee The establishment of a national shipping company and the onset of Kedmah’s voyages were accompanied at first, as we saw, by great excitement and support—but the continued incidents raised a sizeable wave of criticism. Private entrepreneurs claimed that the technical failures and the resulting financial losses demonstrated insufficient professionalism for a business so large and complex. In their opinion, the constant friction between the partners reflected a commercial and administrative failure. Zim’s very establishment, they felt, needed to be put to public debate, as the establishment of the national shipping company and the purchase of the Kedmah constituted a complete disregard for ten years of private shipping enterprise in the country; the national shipping company was bound to compete with them.⁸³ The crew’s strikes, too, pointed to continued conflicts with the English experts, which they felt demanded an external investigation.⁸⁴ The heads of Zim warded off the claims, seeing fit to emphasize the benefits of the ship’s purchase rather than the difficulties on the ship and in the relationships with the English partners.⁸⁵ Ultimately, the Jewish Agency appointed an investigative committee on the Kedmah incident in early 1948. The committee’s mandate was thus defined: “The committee is directed to examine the affair of the establishment of the partnership of the Kedem company, the purchase of the ship Kedmah, its preparation, and the reasons that caused the complications on its voyages and all that was involved in the administration of said service financially, technically, and corporately.”⁸⁶

 “Din ṿe-Ḥeshbon shel ha-Ṿaada le-Ḥaḳirat Parashat Ḳedmah,” 11 October 1948, S30/3143, CZA, Jerusalem.  V. Groman, “What Came before the Kedmah” [in Hebrew], ha-Boḳer, November 9, 1947; K. Hilb, “Next to the Kedmah’s Deathbed” [in Hebrew], be-Ṭerem, November 1, 1947.  “Four-and-a-half-hour Strike on the Kedmah” [in Hebrew], Haaretz, November 27, 1947; “The Kedmah’s Workers’ Demand Is Justified” [in Hebrew], Davar, December 3, 1947.  See especially Dr. Wydra’s response in a speech he gave on the occasion of the signing the contract with the Kedmah mariners at the Seafarers’ House [in Hebrew], 5 September 1947, container 23164, ZCA, Haifa.  Protocol of the Jewish Agency’s Executive, decision on the establishment of the committee investigating the Kedmah affair, Jerusalem [in Hebrew], 21 December 1947, S30/3143, CZA, Jerusalem; Eliyahu Dobkin, Jewish Agency Executive, Jerusalem, to Eric Muller, Y. Nathanson, and

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After a number of months of discussion, the committee determined, inter alia, that Harris and Dixon’s approach to the preparatory work in Antwerp was highly suspicious. While they could not be suspected of willful negligence, there was no doubt that the repairs in Antwerp were not conducted properly. The ship’s leaving Antwerp in inadequate condition, after it had remained nearly a year at the shipyard, was unreasonable. Thus, the culpability of Harris and Dixon, which had been responsible for selecting the shipyard and overseeing the repairs, was indisputable. However, the committee could not determine what the primary reason was for the repeated mishaps in the ship’s machinery; it recommended that if the source of the problem could not be identified in a reasonable amount of time, the ship should be sold under the best terms possible. The committee also expressed regret that the sequence of events described to it resulted in the squandering of much of the trust, enthusiasm, and good will displayed by the general Jewish public in support of Jewish shipping when the enterprise had begun.⁸⁷ Assigning blame for Kedmah’s condition to Harris and Dixon raised objections on the part of Zim’s management; it was concerned that publication of the committee’s conclusions would damage Kedem’s corporate interests by leading to a lawsuit on the part of the English partner, to the termination of the partnership, and to the revoking of their investment in addition to a defamation lawsuit.⁸⁸ Zim’s management claimed that the report was flawed because representatives of Harris and Dixon were not asked to give testimony before the committee. They emphasized that Harris and Dixon had invested most of the equity in purchasing and repairing the Kedmah—roughly 250,000 Palestine pounds of the total of approximately 450,000 Palestine pounds—and noted that no Jewish shipping company had managed to raise private Jewish equity for a partnership in the sector; the non-Jewish English company had agreed to do this with substantial capital and while maintaining the Yishuv’s national interests in the Land of Israel. The Yishuv’s inexperience in repairing used ships and the British company’s investment meant that Zim felt it could rely on Harris and Dixon.

Shlomo Kaplansky [in Hebrew], 8 January 1948, S30/3143, CZA, Jerusalem. The committee members were Eric Muller, director of the Ata company, member of the Atid board; Menachem Margolin, lawyer, alderman in the Haifa municipality; and Shlomo Kaplansky, engineer, head of the Technion in Haifa. Lawyer G. Cherniak was appointed committee secretary. The committee heard testimony from twenty-two people and visited the ship itself twice.  “Din ṿe-Ḥeshbon shel ha-Ṿaada le-Ḥaḳirat Parashat Ḳedmah,” 11 October 1948, S30/3143, CZA, Jerusalem.  Dr. Naftali Wydra, Zim Israel Navigation Co., to the Office of the Secretary General, Jewish Agency Executive, Jerusalem [in Hebrew], 21 October 1948, S30/3143, CZA, Jerusalem.

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Most importantly, Zim’s management emphasized that despite the pitfalls, Kedmah was a pioneer in establishing maritime nationalism and sovereignty of the Jewish Yishuv in the Land of Israel, and thus the partnership that made it possible must not be compromised in any fashion: …despite the mishaps we met with the inception of our enterprise we laid the groundwork for serious progress in the shipping sector. Our ship, Kedmah, was the basis for the purchase of the ships Negbah and Galilah [the second and third ships purchased by Zim in the first months after the establishment of the state], all three of which together, constituting a tonnage of 12,800 tons, have created an important national asset and jobs and training for three hundred Jewish seamen.⁸⁹

The management’s claims were accepted and the findings of the investigative committee that were published did not include the sections whose content related to the English partner.⁹⁰ As expected, the publication of a partial report led to criticism on the part of the private shipping entrepreneurs and the civilian ranks in general, who continued to dispute the very founding of the national shipping company.⁹¹ No document summarizing all of the Kedmah’s activity in the joint company is available. In August 1948, one year after its service began, it was reported that the ship had conducted twenty rounds of voyages between the Land of Israel and Europe, with over 11,000 passengers, 9,235 of whom were immigrants.⁹² Chaim Weizmann, first president of the State of Israel, departed for a vacation aboard the Kedmah on July 5, 1950.⁹³ In an interview he gave on board the

 Zim Israel Navigation Co. Ltd., Haifa, to the Office of the Secretary General, Jewish Agency Executive [in Hebrew}, 28 November 1948, S30/3143, CZA, Jerusalem.  Jewish Agency, Press Office [in Hebrew], 28 November 1948, S30/3143, CZA, Jerusalem; publication of the report investigating the Kedmah affair, protocol of the meeting of the Jewish Agency Executive, Jerusalem [in Hebrew], 29 November 1948, S30/3143, CZA, Jerusalem. For criticism on the report not being published, see for example: ha-Boḳer staff, “Secrets of the Kedmah Report” [in Hebrew], ha-Boḳer, November 19, 1948.  For example, see “The Investigative Committee in the Kedmah Scandal Determines: Much Trust, Enthusiasm, Goodwill, and Money Was Wasted” [in Hebrew], ha-Ḥerut, January 27, 1949; “Kedmah Squandered the Faith in Jewish Shipping” [in Hebrew], ha-Mashḳif, January 27, 1949; “Zim Relied too Heavily on the British Shipping Company” [in Hebrew], Ḳol ha-Am, January 30, 1949, 1.  The net income in the first year was 115,000 Palestine pounds. See “Kedmah Has Brought 9,000 Immigrants until Now” [in Hebrew], Davar, August 22, 1948.  M. Maimon, head of the ceremony, ceremony of the president’s voyage [in Hebrew], 5 July 1950, G-15/5382, ISA, Jerusalem.

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Fig. 10: The SS Kedmah moves out to Haifa Bay, July 5, 1950. Photographer: Teddy Brauner (The National Photo Collection, D671-063)

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ship he was quoted as saying, “It is a pleasure, a Jewish ship.”⁹⁴ The surge in the state’s needs forced Zim to add other modern and sophisticated ships to its lines; the Kedmah was sold at the end of 1952 to the English partners, who bought out Zim’s portion of the partnership. The sale of the Kedmah profited the national coffers, helping replenish the Israeli fleet with more modern ships.⁹⁵

Fishery and Fishing Settlements, 1945 – 1948 At the end of the Second World War, the Jewish fishing settlements and fisheries industry were in a state of crisis. It stemmed primarily from the renewal of inexpensive fish import, which led to a decrease in fish prices; from the depletion of fishery sources in the spaces which were narrow and close to the shores as a result of the augmented fishing in them during the war; and from a lack of personnel due to the cessation of immigration.⁹⁶ The existence of the fishing settlements was aided at the time by the plans to renew illegal immigration, which became the supreme national goal and an important part of the struggle for sovereignty, and led to support for the settlement enterprise’s fishing settlements specifically. The fishing settlements made themselves available to the Haganah

 A. Telmi, “With the President on the Kedmah” [in Hebrew], Yam, August–September 1950, 17– 18.  Our Writer in Haifa, “Two New Cargo Ships” [in Hebrew], Davar, October 21, 1952. The value of the ship at the time of sale was estimated at between 200,000 and 250,000 Palestine pounds; both partners agreed to sell because problems had once again been found in the turbines, which required serious repair. The English offer to buy Zim’s portion in the partnership of 325,000 Israeli lira was considered an outstanding opportunity. After deducting all of the investments and expenses on repairs, Zim made 31,000 Israeli lira from the English partner. See Dr. Naftali Wydra, Shoham Maritime Services Ltd., to Dr. A. Konikoff, commissioner of foreign currency [in Hebrew], 25 October 1952, container 23164, ZCA, Haifa.  The hardships in the fisheries industry led Nahshon to give its boats to the settlements. Thus the Histadrut fishery market was transferred to the settlements’ independent farming administration: Nakdimon was given to Mishmar HaYam; Nissan and Nun were given to Gordonia-Maapilim; Nitzahon was given to Ein HaYam; Ne’eman was given to Caesarea; Maoz to the Scouts; and Nesher to the Hashulim fishing cooperative in Tel Aviv. Because of the state of the industry at the end of the war, these boats brought losses to the farms; A., “The Crisis in the Fisheries Industry Has Passed Its Peak” [in Hebrew], Yam, April – May 1946, 14– 15; Tsur, Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 2:205 – 6. The difficulty that characterized the maritime settlement on the Mediterranean shores after the Second World War is also evident in the literary realm: Pessah BarAdon’s book, Furrow in the Sea, published in 1946, was one of the first literary novels about the land’s fishing settlements, and it reveals a little about the efforts to hold on to the land’s shores in the fishing settlements.

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and Palmach and helped bring the immigrants, Jewish survivors from Europe, to the Land of Israel. Special significance was accorded in this context to the operation of a number of boats during the time between the Second World War and the War of Independence, when the fishermen were given tasks other than fishing—helping sabotage warships and British patrol ships which were attempting to prevent the arrival of the immigrants at the land’s shores. The fishing boats were also involved in the extraction of a number of the immigration organizers from the camps in Cyprus and bringing them to the Land of Israel. During the War of Independence, the fishing boats patrolled the Tel Aviv port and even took part in the siege on the Jaffa port; they were some of the first boats to infiltrate it by sea, with their crew members seizing its facilities.⁹⁷ In the northern lakes—Lake Kinneret and the Hula Lake—the trend of bolstering the fish farms continued between the war’s end and the state’s establishment. One prominent milestone in the conquest of Jewish fishery on the Kinneret after the war was HaKibbutz HaMeuhad’s decision in early 1946 to establish the Lake Kinneret Fishermen’s Association, a fishery cooperative that included Ein Gev and Ginosar. In the years before the decision, there were no small number of disagreements and confrontations between the fishermen from the two kibbutzim over the fishery areas in the lake, but with time they learned to recognize the economic advantage to cooperation. Establishing the association led to methodical and organized work, and reports show a decline in workdays and a rise in production. The cooperative related to working arrangements, coordinating deliveries, treasury, and an administration that was made up of representatives of the farms and the fishermen.⁹⁸ In 1947, with the military instability and the growing battles in Palestine, the Arab fishermen disappeared almost entirely from the northwestern shores of Lake Kinneret, despite the fact that it was under Syrian rule. Kibbutz fishermen exploited the uncertainty and breached the limitations and regulations that were customary at the lake, specifically returning to light fishing.⁹⁹ After the conquest  Schmida, “History of Fishing,” 18 – 19.  Porat, Fishery Pioneers, 162– 64; Avshalom, Ginosar, 88 – 89, 100 – 101. From the early forties, attempts were made to form partnerships between the fishermen at Ein Gev and Ginosar, and the subject had its ups and downs. See Betelem Ein Gev pamphlet 100 [in Hebrew], 22 April 1940, 13; Betelem Ein Gev pamphlet, 137 [in Hebrew], 28 March 1945, 9; Betelem Ein Gev pamphlet 138 [in Hebrew], 3 May 1945, 3; Betelem Ein Gev pamphlet 143 [in Hebrew], 30 June 1945, 2– 3. On the establishment of the cooperative and its evaluation after a number of months of joint work see Betelem Ein Gev pamphlet 150 [in Hebrew], 17 October 1945, 2; Betelem Ein Gev pamphlet 165 [in Hebrew], 4 June 1946, 2– 4.  Ginosar pamphlet [in Hebrew], 28 January 1948, cited in Porat, Fishery Pioneers, 166; in 1948, there was a rise of 8 percent relative to the year before in Jewish lake fishing, with a 50 percent

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of Tiberias in April 1948, the last Arab fishermen left the lake; for the first time in its history, the Kinneret was entirely in the hands of the Jews. The farms’ fishery fleet had been destroyed in the shelling, some burned and some sunk, but with the end of the first lull in fighting, on July 10, 1948, the Lake Kinneret Fishermen’s Association purchased boats and equipment and renewed their work. The Tiberias veterans, who had left the sector in 1929, returned to work at the lake. This infrastructure served the expansion of Jewish fishery in the Kinneret and its reinforced presence using advanced methods in the years after the establishment of the state.¹⁰⁰ In Hulata, the time period saw an upgrade in fishing methods and an expansion of the fishing area, but the settlement at Dardara (on the eastern side of the Hula Lake) was problematic; members had to row each day from shore to shore in order to transfer food and equipment. In 1947, after approximately a decade of settlement, when it became clear that there was no chance for adding land to Dardara, Hulata received its first plots of land for a permanent settlement near the lake, on the lands of Talil, east of Yesud HaMa’ala. Cabins were built, courtyard industries were established, and the waterline was even extended to the agricultural farm. The group members became tillers of soil as well, working some three thousand dunams of dryland crops, irrigated land, and even plantations. At the same time, the fishery work also grew, and the Hulata fishermen continued to improve their methods, putting into motion fishnet sweeping methods that used electricity, leading to great savings in manpower and work hours.¹⁰¹ The first collaborative maritime settlement—Mikhmoret—was founded in 1945. It was established on JNF land in Abu Zabura, the small bay between Hadera and the Alexander River, north of Kfar Vitkin.¹⁰² At first, a group of twenty

rise in bream harvest. The Ministry of Agriculture attributed this to the freedom from the Mandatory fishery ordinances, specifically the use of light fishing. See Ministry of Agriculture, Fishery Unit, Statistics and Permitting Section, “Sikum ha-Dayig ha-Ivri li-Shnat Tashaḥ bi-Hashṿaa im Shnat Tashaz,” June 1949, S15/9572, CZA, Jerusalem.  Porat, Fishery Pioneers, 251– 60. On the sequence of events in Tiberias during the War of Independence and the involvement of the Ein Gev and Ma’agan residents in the reinforcements that arrived by sea and helped conquer the city, see Nun, “Tiberias”; R. Yizrael, “The Battle for Tiberias in the War of Independence” [in Hebrew], mi-Tov Teverya 7 (1988 – 1989): 32– 47.  Y. Geiger, “The Growth of Fishing Settlements” [in Hebrew], Yam, March 1951; Tsur, Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 2:127.  Oren, Settlement, 84– 85; Shimron, “Mikhmoret: First Years,” in Mikhmoret: Forty Years. The Abu Zabura harbor was, for many years, active only as a port for export of watermelon, and only briefly each year; in watermelon season, Arabs would bring convoys of camels carrying watermelons from the area and from farther away to the impermanent port, whence tens of thousands

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Notrim members who had been released from the British police force settled there; in 1946, a group of thirty people who were released from the British army—most from the Jewish Brigade—joined them.¹⁰³ During the first year, the Maritime Department aided the group by training its members to work on fishing boats, purchasing equipment, and paying the instructor. Near the end of 1946, the settlement purchased the Ophir and the Karish, the first boat to be equipped with the new trawling nets developed based on the efforts of the Sea Fisheries Research Station in Haifa (see below).¹⁰⁴ In Mikhmoret, Palyam training was held on the sea and shore, and the bay served as shelter for the fishing boats and for training. Many were the times that boats departed the bay to meet immigrant ships and navigate them to the shore or to conduct other defense-related activities.¹⁰⁵ A special relationship existed with the immigrant camps in Cyprus and the young adults who were secreted from them to the land. The fishing boats brought weapons to the camps on a number of occasions and extracted Palyam fighters who had been hiding there from British intelligence. The Karish sailed to Cyprus forty-nine times, smuggling more than 1,100 fighters who were trained in the camps into the land.¹⁰⁶ The establishment of the Sea Fisheries Research Station was an additional milestone in the process of advancing Jewish fishery. The Jewish Agency’s Maritime Department and the PML both stood behind the station, which was founded in Haifa in April 1946. The Yishuv leadership, in an attempt to bring Jewish fishery up to par with progressive countries, made efforts to raise the level of

of watermelons were sent via sailboats to Egypt and Syria. For more on this and on the Abu Zabura harbor, see Avitsur, “Watermelons.”  Avraham Solomon, “Mikhmoret” [in Hebrew], Yam, June 1951, 9. A group of members had settled in Haifa before the war, where they worked in fishery and shipping at the port. During the war, they enlisted in the British fleet and continued to learn the sea professions there. They served in the Jewish Brigade in Europe, and near the end of the war the British allowed them to train themselves for future civilian occupations. The group organized training in Grado, a small fishing village between Venice and Trieste, on the Adriatic coast in northern Italy. A month later, the Jewish Brigade moved to Belgium and from there to Holland, where the soldiers were charged with guarding a camp of German prisoners in IJmuiden, a port city near Amsterdam. There was a fishery school there, and the group members organized a three-month fishery course for themselves. See Sahar, Wooden Boats, 9 – 23; Ruppin, “Fishery Training,” in Mikhmoret: Forty Years. For more, see Ruppin, Around the World, 97– 106.  Sean Levi, “The Mikhmoret Anchorage” [in Hebrew], Yam, February – March 1947, 9; Yam [in Hebrew], April–May 1947, 32; Ruppin, “History of the Moshav,” in Mikhmoret: Forty Years; Sahar, Wooden Boats, 135 – 38.  Shahar, “Mikhmoret,” in Mikhmoret: Forty Years; Sahar, Wooden Boats, 61– 66.  Ruppin, Around the World, 103.

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fishery by basing it on scientific research.¹⁰⁷ The station was established in the Tnuva building in the Haifa port, and equipped with a laboratory and a ship for experimentation. The station’s functions were defined on a number of planes: comprehensive investigation of sea conditions; technological efforts in new and existing fishery methods; examining the fish caught using trawling and the fish’s living conditions and movements; fishery attempts using new trawling methods; and the discovery of new fishery fields. The ship Nisayon (meaning attempt or experiment), built in the shipyard in Sdot Yam and made available to the station, had installed a machine for measuring depth using electronic means, the first in the land at the time. It made it possible to create a precise map of the sea and reveal the locations of large schools of fish. Lab work accompanied the regular work aboard the Nisayon, and it was conducted in cooperation with the Hebrew University’s Department of Zoology. Ultimately, the goal was to place the requisite knowledge for planned fishery in the hands of the fishermen. At first, the personnel at the station included three people, under the management of Dr. H. Lissner, who had worked for many years in maritime and fishery research in Germany and outside of it.¹⁰⁸ The station’s goal was to lay the scientific groundwork for the development of sea fishery in the waters of the Land of Israel. Indeed, one of the first and most important conclusions reached was that the land’s waters did not suffer from overfishing. In fact, the opposite was true; the station’s experts felt that fishery should be noticeably increased, as their investigations proved that the small fish were reaching a relatively old age, a fact that attested to the slow growth of fish in the sea. Their depletion, it was claimed, would lead to an improvement in the growth of the remaining fish.¹⁰⁹ In 1947, the station reported that it had developed a new trawling net, one that was well-suited to local fishing conditions, as well as discovering fertile fishing grounds in the country’s south, ones that would make it possible to fish throughout the year.¹¹⁰

 Oren, “Survey”; “With the Establishment of the Sea Fisheries Research Station” [in Hebrew], Yam, February 1946, 2.  Y. Wershovsky, “Im Haḳamat ha-Taḥana le-Ḥeḳer ha-Dayig ha-Yami,” 25 April 1946, S74/50, CZA, Jerusalem; N. Wydra, Haifa, survey of the work at the Sea Fisheries Research Station [in Hebrew], 21 October 1946, S74/50, CZA, Jerusalem.  H. Lissner, “From the Activities of the Sea Fisheries Research Station in Haifa (Two Years after Its Establishment)” [in Hebrew], Yam, June – July 1948, 14– 15.  “Ha-Yidug ha-Ivri bi-Ḥodshei Yanuar – Yuni 1947,” S74/70, CZA, Jerusalem.

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Maritime Training, Education, and Sports, 1945 – 1948 From the end of the Second World War until the founding of the State of Israel, national-educational activity in the maritime field continued, as did the trend of the Yishuv leadership broadening and cementing its influence on the world of maritime training and education. In cooperation with the education department of Knesset Yisrael, the administration of the nautical school in Haifa, and the PML, which was also growing stronger, plans continued for training students for maritime activity at different points on the shore. The activities were run primarily for students from the upper grades of public schools.¹¹¹ The education department imposed mandatory swimming lessons in public schools in locations in which conditions allowed. In the 1944 – 45 school year, some ten thousand students had swimming lessons, and swimming lessons for school students continued in the years that followed.¹¹² The waters sports associations were budgeted money to purchase training boats and equipment for education and sailing, and each year the Maritime Department, in cooperation with the PML, ran a sea camp for instructors from the associations in one of the fishing settlements on the Mediterranean; members of Hapoel, the Sea Scouts, and Elitzur participated. The training camp held in Caesarea in July 1945, for example, had seventy-three campers and eleven counselors from Hapoel and the Sea Scouts who made use of seven sailboats and one motorboat. The camp was three weeks long; at its end, the students received the rank of Madrikh Bet (second-level instructor).¹¹³ An additional stage in the process of institutionalizing maritime training was the Maritime Department’s appointment of Captain Zeev Hayam as national supervisor of maritime instruction and training in the various sports associations.¹¹⁴ There were 1,600 students and instructors in these associations in the Land of Israel in 1947, most notably from Hapoel. In that year, there were 700 members in Hapoel’s six active sea branches around the country, with a total 28 training boats: Haifa had 240 members and 12 boats; Tel Aviv, 200 mem-

 For example, at the beginning of the 1945 – 46 school year, some 250 students were trained in Nahariya, Shavei Tzion, Degania, Tiberias, Kfar Vitkin, Herzliya, and Tel Aviv. The curriculum included rowing, sailing, and ropes work. See “Maritime Training for School Students at Points on the Coast” [in Hebrew], Yam, November 1945, 18.  PML center, The Palestine Maritime League and its activities, Tel Aviv [in Hebrew], 1945 – 1946, S74/75, CZA, Jerusalem; in 1946, twelve thousand students learned to swim and in 1947, the number was fifteen thousand. See “Swimming Lessons for Schoolchildren” [in Hebrew], Yam, August – September 1947, 31.  Yam [in Hebrew], July 1945, 18.  B.-K. Meirovitz to N. Wydra [in Hebrew], 23 April 1946, S74/153, CZA, Jerusalem.

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bers and 9 boats; in Netanya, there were 90 members and 2 boats; in Nahariya, 70 members and 2 boats; Bat Yam had 65 members and 2 boats; and Kfar Vitkin, which was under the auspices of Netanya’s sea branch, had 30 members but no boats.¹¹⁵ The nautical school next to the Technion was once again overseen by Captain Miller after the war. In July 1946 he initiated the purchase of a sailboat named Valdora for training.¹¹⁶ The boat was purchased using the South African branch of the PML, and those with experience on board were able to take the British Chamber of Commerce’s examinations for first mate, as its capacity was greater than twenty tons, the minimum necessary for examinations. By the end of 1947, it had sailed to Cyprus three times, twice to Beirut, and once it had tried to reach Rhodes—a great storm made the trip impossible and it returned to port. These journeys gave the students crucial seafaring experience. Aside from the longer journeys, the ship left the port for daily training along the shores and in the Haifa bay. From early 1948, there were no long journeys due to the war; it was impossible to leave Haifa’s port.¹¹⁷ In the summer of 1948, with ten years under its belt, the school had graduated six classes (from 1941– 42 to 1947– 48); of the seventy-three students who took final examinations twenty-five (of thirty) sailors, twenty-two mechanics (of twenty-five), nine radio operators (of thirteen), and four shipbuilders (of five) passed. Sixty of these graduates (72 percent) worked in seafaring professions. Moreover, some thirty students worked at sea before completing their studies, after two or three years of training at the school; they completed their practical and theoretical training overseas. The examinations were held in cooperation with the Mandate government’s education department and under its supervision.¹¹⁸

 Y. Teres, “Our Activities in Maritime Training” [in Hebrew], Yam, June 1947, 7– 8; Hapoel center, Report on the status of the Hapoel sea company branches for 1947 [in Hebrew], S74/ 127, CZA, Jerusalem.  Palestine Maritime League Center, The Palestine Maritime League in action, Tel Aviv [in Hebrew], 1945 – 1946, S74/75, CZA, Jerusalem. For more data on the boat, which had a capacity of 106 tons and a speed of six to seven knots, see “The Training Ship Valdora Has Reached Our Shores” [in Hebrew], Yam, July 1946, 2– 3; for an account of work aboard the Valdora see Reuven Rihan, interview [in Hebrew], 17 April 1995, HI, Haifa.  S. Kaplansky, director of the Hebrew Technion in Haifa and F. Olendorf, acting director of the nautical school, to Ministry of Transportation, Israeli government [in Hebrew], 23 March 1949, G-5/1744, appendix 9, ISA, Jerusalem. On the journey to Rhodes and the hardships along the way, see Shmuel Tankus’s account: Binot, Jubilee, 17– 19.  S. Kaplansky, director of the Hebrew Technion in Haifa and F. Olendorf, acting director of the nautical school, to Ministry of Transportation, Israeli government [in Hebrew], 23 March 1949, G-5/1744, appendix 1, ISA, Jerusalem; S. Kaplansky, the Technion and the nautical school,

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Another cultural-educational enterprise that continued after the Second World War was Sea Day, which, as we saw, was first celebrated in 1943. The assemblies held after the war commemorated those who were not able to celebrate the occasion due to the war—those killed in the ghettoes, Jewish rebels and partisans, volunteers in the British navy and army—and the ships that were sunk in the service of the Royal Navy.¹¹⁹ Sea Day in 1946 was especially meaningful; it signified a decade since the Tel Aviv port had opened and expressed a desire to cement and expand the Tel Aviv port, along with the need to name it the sovereign Jewish port of the Jewish settlement in the land. The achievements of Jewish seafaring, the losses in war, and the state of the Tel Aviv port were all presented at a press conference held at the Tel Aviv press club. Representatives of water sports associations and youth organizations, students at the nautical school, and high schoolers all participated in festive parades in Tel Aviv and Haifa. In an appeal circulated by the National Council’s education department, principals and teachers in elementary and high schools were asked to celebrate Sea Day on 23 Iyar; for one hour they were to hold discussions in classrooms about the sea. Some ten thousand schoolchildren visited the Tel Aviv port. Levin Kipnis wrote a play in honor of the tenth anniversary of the port, named “The Port Tale,” meant for children in preschool and the lower grades; it opened on Sea Day in Tel Aviv, staged by the Children’s Theater.¹²⁰ However, as we noted in the previous chapter, from the first year of Sea Day’s celebration, in 1943, arguments and polemics accompanied the festivities. These related, most prominently, to the matter of who was responsible for the conquest of the sea, who had contributed and continued to contribute more to the founding of Jewish seafaring, and who had precedence in the formation of the new Jewish sailor. The right continued to complain that the hegemonic

Haifa [in Hebrew], 20 June 1948, S74/150, CZA, Jerusalem. For an account of a graduate of nautical mechanics in 1947 see Reuven Rihan, interview [in Hebrew], 17 April 1995, HI, Haifa; for an account of a graduate of the sailing track, see Avraham Tavor, interview [in Hebrew], 11 May 1944, HI, Haifa. After the establishment of the government, the school elected to separate from the Technion, and the curriculum of the nautical school was incorporated with the requirements of the navy. The nautical school moved to the area of the Turkish railroad station in Acre; in October 1954, it became the Marine Officers’ School, Acre; Yarkoni, The Sea, 51. During the war years, Shmuel Tankus served as coordinator of Hapoel’s maritime activity and an instructor in the maritime course in Caesarea. At the end of the war he joined the nautical school, working as an instructor and in practical training. Between 1960 and 1970, Tankus was the director of the nautical school; it had moved to Acre and changed its name to the Marine Officers’ School. See Eshel, Shmuel Tankus, 56 – 61, 122 – 39.  “‘Sea Day’—The Youngest Holiday in Our Homeland” [in Hebrew], Yam, June 1945, 4.  “‘Sea Day’ 1946” [in Hebrew], Yam, June 1946, 6 – 9.

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agents did not recognize their contribution, dismissed them, and did not incorporate them in the creation of the land’s maritime ethos.¹²¹ The conflict was so severe that in 1947 Zevulun and Betar did not take part in Sea Day celebrations.¹²² Even after the state was established, those on the right and those in Zevulun’s orbit continued to complain about exclusion and dispossession, and about not being included in the Sea Day festivities. In 1951, the Revisionist circles declared 23 Iyar—the day on which David Raziel, the first commander of the Irgun, was killed—memorial day for Irgun casualties.¹²³

Military Maritime Training in the Palyam, 1945 – 1948 Between 1945 and 1948, illegal immigration stood at the center of the Haganah and Palyam’s struggle against the British.¹²⁴ The British opposition to the Jewish influx to the land’s shores after the war was expressed primarily in the power struggles that developed in the international arena near the end of the war. The winds of the Cold War began to blow late in the war between the eastern bloc—the USSR and the communist bloc—and the western countries, foremost the United States, Britain, and France. At the end of the war, sources in the British government claimed that a Soviet policy was directing tens of thousands of displaced Jews to Palestine in order to undermine British control in the Middle

 Ha-Mashḳif wrote that on Sea Day it was customary to make a reckoning of the past and of future possibilities, and at ceremonies it was appropriate to mention the pioneers in maritime training; however, at that time “Hess [had been] dismissed,” in its words, from the first sea pioneers and the “first rowers of Betar,” the first to call to the sea, were not mentioned. In its opinion, the reason for this was that the official history being written was colored by political party. See “Sea Day” [in Hebrew], ha-Mashḳif, May 28, 1946, 2.  The press identified with the right at the time wrote that Betar announced that they were not invited to Sea Day celebrations and Zevulun did not participate in the festivities because it refused to march in a parade in which red flags were flying. See ha-Mashḳif [in Hebrew], May 14, 1647, 4.  “Memorial Service for Commander David Raziel” [in Hebrew], ha-Mashḳif, May 28, 1946, 3; Bauer, “Sea Day.”  Illegal immigration played an important role in the national struggle for the establishment of a state, and the different affairs tied up in this activity, whose essence was to bring immigrants to the land in the thirties and forties without the approval of the British authorities, had international repercussions and have been the subject of much research in the subsequent years. For a selection, see Horev, Dawning Ships; Naor, Haapala; Zertal, Catastrophe to Power; Shapira, Haapala; Bogner, Resistance Boats; Halamish, Dual Race; Halamish, “Haapala,” in Shiran, Naval Arena. On Palyam in the illegal immigration, see Zohar, Palyam; Zohar and Pail, Naval Palmach, 41– 115; Yanai and Almog, Gates Are Open.

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East.¹²⁵ Britain may have won the war, but it was battered and bruised; in order to remain a superpower in the face of the eastern bloc, the British attributed great strategic importance to continued control of the Middle East, and Palestine in particular.¹²⁶ In the Middle East, Britain controlled sea, air, and land bases, oil fields and transport of oil, and the Suez Canal—but all of this demanded cooperation on the part of the Arab-Muslim world; the Labour government, which rose to power after the victory in 1945, adopted a pronounced pro-Arab policy.¹²⁷ In early 1946, the British understood that the Yishuv’s primary efforts were devoted to illegal immigration and chose to battle the immigration using the full force of their military. The British reached the conclusion that the continued immigration would damage their interests, making them confront the Arab and Muslim world, which was important for the preservation of the Empire against the Soviet threat in general, the supply of Mideastern oil, and the safeguarding of the Suez Canal in particular.¹²⁸ The first naval course, which opened in January 1945, and the establishment of the sea company four months later were elements of the preparations to renew immigration with the end of the Second World War. The Palyam was made up of volunteer civil seafarers, members of the maritime youth movements, graduates of the nautical school, veterans from the British navy, and Palmach members from various companies.¹²⁹ The course instructors were members of Hapoel’s fleet and people with maritime experience. Studies included, inter alia, swimming, rowing, navigation, and knowledge of the land’s shores, as well as lectures on accompanying illegal immigration ships and debarking their passengers to the coast. Until the War of Independence, the sea company’s activity focused on three fields: (1) Illegal immigration. With its renewal at the end of the Second World War, some seventy members of the company were annexed to the Mossad

 Liebreich, Illegal Immigration, 47– 62. My thanks to my student Giora Kadder for calling my attention to the existence of the book.  Montgomery, Memoirs, 378 – 98.  For more on the different considerations guiding Britain’s policy in the Middle East and Palestine in particular from the end of the Second World War, see Sheffer, “Toward Withdrawal”; Cohen, “Strategic Role,” 21– 35.  On the British policy on illegal immigration at the end of the war, the extent of the forces invested in preventing immigration, and the British government’s methods of fighting it, see Hadari and Tsahor, Voyage to Freedom, 5 – 9; Hadari, Second Exodus, 71– 94; Bogner, Resistance Boats, 33 – 47.  Avigur et al., Hagana, 3:1; Herman, Conquering a Route, 81. For an account from a graduate of the first naval course see Meir Bareket, interview [in Hebrew], 16 December 1997, HI, Haifa.

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LeAliyah Bet and accompanied the ships arriving in the Land of Israel until the establishment of the state.¹³⁰ (2) Acts of sabotage of the British navy’s vessels—coast guard, boats dedicated to expelling immigrants, and barges used by the British as a floating bridge for transferring the immigrants from their ships to the ships expelling them.¹³¹ (3) Participation in land-based fighting. Alongside the maritime work, they took part in the Palmach’s land-based operations.¹³² The students in the first naval course, held in the nautical school next to the Technion in Haifa, lived at first with Kibbutz Sdot Yam’s work company in Kiryat Haim, and later moved to Kibbutz Yagur. Sdot Yam housed the permanent course of boat commanders as well as the maritime sabotage unit. The sea company units that underwent land-based training, basic training before the naval course, and the boat commanders’ course lived in Givat HaShlosha, Ma’abarot, Shefayim, and Neve Yam. A Palyam recruit underwent basic land-based training on the kibbutzim that had Palyam units. Later on, he would undergo an elementary naval course in Sdot Yam and then a three-month boat commanders’ course. Subsequently, the candidates for officers’ corps—graduates of the boat commanders’ course—were invited to a five-month naval course at the nautical school.¹³³

 For clandestine immigration, Palyam had two separate forces. The first worked in the Land of Israel, training, building forces, and debarking immigrants to the coast under the command of the Palmach. The second force was “lent” to the Mossad LeAliyah Bet, forming the command and accompanying the immigrant ships. Some worked overseas—in command and logistical tasks. This force was under the command of the Mossad LeAliyah Bet; see Gilad, Palmach, 579. The climax of the immigration was in the years 1945 and 1948; seventy-five thousand immigrants came illegally. The British Royal Navy had near complete success in blocking the influx; only 1,892 of the immigrants who came between December 25, 1945 and May 29, 1948 were able to land on the land’s shores and remain there. The rest were captured and jailed in the Atlit camp, and, from August 1946, in camps in Cyprus; Horev, Dawning Ships, 205 – 9. For an analysis of the failures in debarking immigrants at the land’s shores, see Kadder, “Beaching Phase.”  The Palmach’s sabotage unit, the “squad,” or ḥulia, as it was known, was a small group of about ten members, but it was of great significance to the Palyam. Its goal was the sabotage of the British navy and coast guard’s ships. The group’s successes were impressive, and despite the fact that the group had almost no underwater fighting gear, it damaged eleven British military or police vessels. For more, see Zohar and Pail, Naval Palmach, 132– 52; Yanai and Almog, Gates Are Open, 116 – 18 (account of Yohay Ben-Nun); Ben-Nun and Gery, Yohay Ben-Nun, 36 – 44.  Avigur et al., Hagana, 3:1:73 – 74; Herman Conquering a Route, 88; Zohar and Pail, Naval Palmach, 41. For more detailed information on the Palyam, known for its singular battle heritage, see its website: www.palyam.org/indexEn.  Zohar and Pail, Naval Palmach, 99 – 100.

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In November 1947, on the eve of the War of Independence, the Palyam had 368 fighters, of which some 150 were commanders. Some 80 of the commanders were graduates of the naval course and 70 were graduates of the boat commander course; the remaining 78 were trained seafarers and 140 were recruits. The graduates of the courses for boat commanders and naval courses constituted the pool from which captains of immigrant ships and those accompanying them were selected in 1945 – 1948.¹³⁴ Aside from the Palyam force, additional marine potential was found in some eleven hundred veterans of the British navy, two hundred members of the merchant fleet, volunteer foreign mariners, and some two hundred and fifty students from sports associations, water sports associations, marine youth movements, and naval schools as well as members of maritime kibbutzim.¹³⁵ An important role in the illegal immigration was played, as noted, by the various fishing settlements; they may have reached a crisis in the realm of fishery after the war but were still a significant factor in training mariners and serving as a base for the Haganah’s activities. In January 1943, as we saw, the Palmach’s first naval course opened in Sdot Yam in cooperation with the Mossad LeAliyah Bet.¹³⁶ Some members of the Palmach’s maritime unit lived and trained in Sdot Yam, and the Palyam’s first course for mariners after the war was held in Caesarea. Palmach saboteurs who worked at sea were trained in Caesarea. They participated in the “Night of the Trains,” damaging British coast guard ships, with the aid of Sdot Yam’s Alisa. ¹³⁷ These activities and others did not go unnoticed by the British, who identified Sdot Yam as the center of the illegal immigration; it became one of the British army’s primary targets in the search for weapons.¹³⁸

 Based on a report submitted by Yigal Allon to David Ben-Gurion in February 1948, noted in Ben-Gurion, War Diary, 620.  Gelber, Veterans, 373.  Avigur et al., Hagana, 1:409, 418.  Avigur et al., 3:1:859; Tsur, Hakibbutz Hamuechad, 2:206 – 7.  Four searches took place at Sdot Yam. The first was on June 30, 1946, the day after Operation Agatha. The search ended with fifteen wounded and some one hundred members held in Atlit, who were moved to Rafiah two days later. Most returned home six weeks later, but eighteen of them remained at Rafiah for a number of months. The second search was held on August 26 – 27, 1946, after the saboteurs damaged the Empire Rival, a ship used to expel immigrants, in the Haifa bay. Eighty-three members were taken to Rafiah and released two days later; two female members were jailed in Latrun. The third search of Sdot Yam took place on September 13, 1946, after the bridge over the Hadera Stream was exploded by the Irgun. Two male kibbutz members and five females were arrested. The fourth search was held on April 14, 1947. See Ben-Tzvi, Sdot Yam, 72, 77, 82– 83.

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The Palyam continued its clandestine immigration activities until the end of May 1948, but with the Partition Plan on November 29, 1947, and the growing nationalist tension between Jews and Arabs, it had a number of new tasks: Another Palyam company was founded at Haifa’s port, meant to preserve Jewish interests there. In mid-December 1947, when the danger to the safety of the Jewish workers at the Haifa port grew, a division of the maritime unit began work at the port, numbering twenty-five Palyam members. Its goal was to protect the workers and the work and to gain experience in port work. The members were brought in as Solel Boneh employees, and integrated security with ongoing work at the port. The Palyam built caches in tractors, and their people spread out to a number of places in the port where there were Jewish workers. After the massacre at the refineries in Haifa on January 1, 1948, in which thirty-nine Jewish workers were killed, a decision was made to reinforce Palyam’s forces at Haifa’s port, and weapons were secreted in and stashed in various corners. The command over what was known from that point on as the Port Brigade was given to Yohay Ben-Nun, and it included ninety fighters. Working in port jobs, the Port Brigade’s members disguised themselves as regular employees.¹³⁹ At the height of the War of Independence, the Palyam was called to battles on land. At the time, the Palyam was comprised of four hundred fighters, half of whom were sent to the battles on the road to Jerusalem within the Harel Brigade’s fourth battalion. More than ninety Palyam fighters died in the fighting, and ten more fell in battles in the south.¹⁴⁰ The Palyam became an important component in the process of building the fledgling state’s naval force. On one hand, the birth of Israel’s navy was accompanied by countless tensions between Palyam members and veterans of the British navy, as part of the political struggle over the nature of the new and evolving army—between the national approach of Ben-Gurion, who did not want the continued existence of the Palmach and, within it, the Palyam, and the unique approach of the Palmach headquarters. On the other hand, however, for many years after the state’s establishment, Palyam veterans played important roles in naval operations and command.¹⁴¹

 For more, see Zohar and Pail, Naval Palmach, 154– 64; Ben-Nun and Geri, Yohay Ben-Nun, 45 – 46; Tal, Naval Operations, 43 – 47. During the war, weapons and military equipment were also unloaded at the Haifa port under the noses of the British. See Dan, Solel Boneh, 269 – 70. For accounts from some of the Port Brigade members, see Arie Brosh, interview [in Hebrew], 1 March 1996, HI, Haifa; Arie Barak, interview [in Hebrew], 5 June 1995, HI, Haifa; Avraham Tavor, interview [in Hebrew], 11 May 1944, HI, Haifa.  Yanai and Almog, Gates Are Open, 16 – 17; Zohar and Pail, Naval Palmach, 153– 63.  Ran, “Israeli Navy”; Kidron, “Political and Partisan,” in Shiran, Naval Arena.

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When it became clear, near the end of the Second World War, that the British had no intention of allowing Jewish Holocaust survivors to immigrate to the land, the Zionist leadership positioned illegal immigration as its top priority. Preparing to bring immigrants to the Land of Israel drew the Yishuv closer to the sea, to maritime professions, and to the expansion of the Jewish hold on them —although ultimately the vast majority of those immigrants did not make it through the gates of the land at the time but rather was expelled by the British. The Palyam’s activities in clandestine immigration, in secret training to bring supply ships by sea, in leading immigrant ships to the shores illegally, and in smuggling weapons to the Land of Israel as well as in training the division for sea sabotage to damage vessels and shore facilities all gave the Yishuv no small amount of experience. One prominent expression of this and of the change that took place in the Yishuv was that on the eve of the founding of the state, the Yishuv controlled three ports—Haifa, Tel Aviv, and Jaffa—and thus had a strategic advantage over the Arab forces. In the country’s lakes in the north—Lake Kinneret and the Hula Lake—the fish farms continued to grow, and right before the state’s founding the two lakes were also controlled by the Jewish settlements in the area. Two additional innovations in the world of fishery at the time were the establishment of the first cooperative maritime settlement and the laying of scientific groundwork for developing sea fishing in the Land of Israel’s waters through the Sea Fisheries Research Station, established in Haifa. The Yishuv drew nearer to the sea in the years that followed the Second World War; the growing need for maritime sovereignty in light of the future challenges also found prominent expression in the efforts made directly after the war to advance a national shipping company. After the war, the Yishuv’s leadership saw the great import of a national shipping company that would act in the nation’s interest and advance the Yishuv’s various goals at the time. The establishment of Zim was the first significant milestone in this field, and the purchase of the Kedmah, its first ship—despite the difficulties and delays in its early years— was the realization of the idea for which the company had been founded. Kedmah was the Yishuv’s pioneering national ship and another important milestone in maritime sovereignty for the state in the making.

Conclusion and Discussion: The Sea in Zionist Thought and Endeavor: Inception, Evolution, and Ideology The Jews’ return to the land of their forefathers and their related agricultural activity were two of Zionism’s foundational ideas; they were viewed as the tools for national revitalization and the birth of new, vigorous Jewish life in the land. This ideology accompanied the Zionist movement from its inception. It remained a tenet when the movement shifted to more practical activity, with the first waves of immigration arriving during the late Ottoman period. The immigrants settled in the land with no particular draw to the sea, its shores, or the seafaring professions. It was only after the arrival of the British, at the end of the First World War, and during their rule in Palestine, that a change was evident in the Yishuv’s approach to the subject. The discussion below is divided into three parts. In the first section, we analyze the central trends that took place along the timeline of the British Mandate period in the four fields we have assessed throughout the volume: ports, shipping, fishery, and education. Here we will highlight the Yishuv’s growing hold on the shores, the change in attitude regarding the sea, and the evolution of a maritime awareness, primarily from the second half of the Mandate period. In the second section, we examine four ideological issues related to the sea and seafaring, which transect all periods and arose time and again throughout the book. These subjects are the disputes between political right and left, between socialist and capitalist worldviews, between private equity and national equity, and concerning the image of the sea and those whose livelihood related to it. In the third section of the conclusion we attempt to answer the final question posed in our introduction: Was the Yishuv’s conquest of the sea during the Mandate period—an economic and professional struggle between different interest groups finally settled in favor of the Jews—a peripheral issue within the land’s geography, society, and perhaps even economy? Was it along the lines of local history, an issue with little real influence on the winds of the time period and its prominent institutions? Or would it be more correct to present it as part of a “topdown” process, an element within the political establishment’s national-institutional decision making and part of the Yishuv’s victory in the national conflict that evolved during the Mandate years?

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110633528-008

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Central Changes in the Mandate-Era Yishuv with Regard to the Sea Ports When the British arrived, Jaffa and Haifa’s ports were the central active ones in Palestine. Jews had not succeeded in gaining access to work at the Jaffa port, although they did specialize in land-based transport to and from it. In Haifa, groups of Jewish workers had attempted to integrate in work at the port in the early twenties; however, the Yishuv’s contribution was more pronounced at the new Haifa port, built by the British and completed in late 1933. The Yishuv’s central leadership, for the most part through the Haifa Workers’ Council, took great pains to keep a hold on the port and incorporate Jewish workers in its construction; Jewish involvement in the port’s operations was considered crucial for guaranteeing the basic interests of the Jewish community in the land as a whole. The leadership’s target: at least one half of the workers in each sector at the Haifa port should be Jewish. And indeed, the relative proportion of Jewish workers at Haifa’s port rose steadily during the thirties until it stood at more than half of the port’s workers immediately prior to the Second World War. There were two central causes for this success. The first was the immigration of experienced Jewish seamen from Salonica, who could carry heavy loads on their backs and were familiar with all types of shipboard work. The second was the integration of kibbutz members in port work; they were viewed as patriotic and willing to accept the Histadrut’s authority, and thus would work well there despite the great physical challenges involved. The outbreak of rioting in April 1936, with the consequent dismissal of the Jews from the Jaffa port was, in retrospect, the central motivating factor behind the foundation of the Tel Aviv port only one month later. It appears that Jewish entry to work at the Haifa port—alongside the necessity resulting from the closure of Jaffa’s port—served as inspiration and impetus for the founding of the Tel Aviv port. Its establishment was one of the central and most significant milestones in the Zionist enterprise in the Land of Israel at the time. Many Yishuv leaders viewed the opening of the first Jewish port in the land as an event of extraordinary historic proportions in the chronicles of Jewish settlement in the land, and it doubtless contributed greatly to the awakening of maritime awareness and sentiment within the Yishuv. In other words, it constituted a seminal step on the road to national sovereignty. During the Second World War, the ports in Jaffa and Tel Aviv—both unprotected—were nearly entirely shut down and many of their vessels commandeered for the war effort by the British Royal Navy. Haifa’s port, in contrast, became the

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country’s central one. The Yishuv adapted to the new reality of war, specializing in a number of occupations that were new to it, incidentally enriching its naval experience: Jewish workers at Haifa’s port began working in jobs that were crucial to the British navy during the war, such as welding and electric work; at Tel Aviv’s port, the fields of Jewish shipbuilding and repair were born. The Yishuv’s growing maritime awareness and increasing recognition that controlling the land’s ports was crucial were significant: on the eve of the state’s establishment, the Yishuv had total and exclusive control over the land’s three active ports— Haifa, Tel Aviv, and Jaffa—and thus an important strategic advantage over the Arab forces.

Shipping Jewish shipping’s evolution during the Mandate period was comprised of three main stages: in the first, during the twenties and the early thirties, a number of attempts were made on the part of private Jewish entrepreneurs to establish shipping companies, but these never reached real profitable activity; all failed after two or three years. This resulted primarily from a lack of experience in running shipping companies, a lack of financial ability, and a lack of connections with veteran shipping companies. The second stage in the development of Jewish shipping took place in the five years preceding the Second World War, when an awakening occurred in the Land of Israel’s private shipping sector. This found expression in the appearance of a number of private Jewish-owned shipping companies and the development of shipping lines between Palestine and destinations around the world. The new state of affairs was a result of the economic prosperity at the time due to, inter alia, the increased number of relatively well-off immigrants in the Fifth Aliyah and the push for Jews to remove their property from Europe with the Nazis’ rise to power. Nonetheless, the relative proportion of shipping that was in Jewish hands at the time was negligible, with private Jewish shipping constituting only a small fraction of the goods and passengers at sea. During this stage, the Yishuv’s leadership still did not intervene; national priorities did not include coming to the aid of private companies and investing in an investment-rich sector. The Second World War led to the paralysis of commercial shipping; it was only with its conclusion that the third stage of Jewish shipping’s development commenced. This time, shipping took place at the initiative of the Yishuv’s central leadership, with the establishment of the first national shipping company, Zim. A company of this sort could not materialize without certain circumstances

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in place, and this occurred with the end of the war. It was then that the leadership recognized the great importance of an independent, national shipping company, one that would act out of Zionist considerations and advance the Yishuv’s various goals in the field of maritime transport. Kedmah, the company’s first vessel, was the flagship of maritime sovereignty in the independent state that would soon arise.

Fishery and Fishing Settlements Before the arrival of the British in Palestine, Jews had barely been involved in the fishery sector. However, from the second half of the twenties a change took place in the way in which the Yishuv related to fishery. Fishing activity—both of individuals and of fishing groups—began to grow; the number of boats and fishing attempts increased, most notably on the part of Jewish fishing groups founded on Lake Kinneret and the Mediterranean shores. This took place against the backdrop of the shifting reign and the British Department of Agriculture’s policy in the early years after the First World War, which was designed to rehabilitate agriculture damaged during the war. For one, the British revoked a 20 percent tax on fishing harvest that had been levied during the Ottoman period. But all of the fishing groups disbanded after two or three years of struggle and hardship, primarily due to a lack of experience, capital, and institutional support—as well as not having a settlement outpost that they could lean on or a permanent place where their families could live and they could develop auxiliary industries. From the second half of the thirties, a new reality began to take shape in Jewish fishery in the Land of Israel, reflecting changes taking place within the Yishuv’s leadership institutions. The leadership began to view the industry as an agricultural sector, one with an important role in cementing new Jewish settlement in the land. Within the change in the leadership’s approach to the sea and its advantages—as well as the desire to bring the different bodies occupied with the sea under their authority—the Jewish Agency founded the Maritime and Fisheries Department and stood behind the establishment of two additional maritime bodies: Nahshon, the joint Jewish Agency-Histadrut company, and the Palestine Maritime League, whose goal was, inter alia, to act as an umbrella organization for popular efforts, encompassing many youth and civilians. This was primarily a result of the fact that from the mid-twenties the weight of widespread activity and water sports associations—and even maritime associations, like Zevulun—had been growing. Through the PML, the Jewish Agency aspired to organize all of these movements under its own authority under the heading of conquest of work at sea, in the ports, in fishery, and in other maritime professions.

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The change in the Yishuv leadership’s approach to the sea and the lessons accumulated from experience in fishery were clear: in order to firmly establish the fisheries sector, the Maritime Department must provide aid for the building of fishing settlements and give both financial and professional support to the sector and settlements in their early days. Nonetheless, Arab fishermen had absolute control over the industry before the Second World War; Jewish fishery constituted only single percentages of the industry’s production and financial turnover. The great shift took place during the war, with the onset of fish farming and breeding. This was a new field, brought in by Jewish industry; it managed to greatly expand during the war and the years that followed. Thanks to the rate of growth of fish ponds during the war and in the subsequent years, the relative proportion of Jewish fishery in the country constantly grew. At the end of the war, the Jews were responsible for 43.5 percent of the general production of fish (in tons) while the value of the Jewish fish product in Palestine pounds stood at 54 percent of the financial turnover—Jewish fishery constituted the majority of the land’s fishery market in terms of financial value. The fishing settlements, whose maritime professions grew more firmly established during the war and in its wake, were primarily found at the lakes—Hulata on the Hula Lake and Ein Gev and Ginosar at Lake Kinneret. Maritime activity began there prior to the war, and for a number of years dozens of members worked regularly in fishery, slowly firming up their settlement. This was not the case for settlements along the Mediterranean, which—while playing a significant role in training seafarers and as a base for Haganah activities—were forced to seek income elsewhere. Sdot Yam was the only farm along the coast that did not abandon fishery before the end of the Mandate period. The scope and significance of HaKibbutz HaMeuhad’s form of settlement was noteworthy. By the end of the War of Independence in 1948, HaKibbutz HaMeuhad had founded twelve fishing settlements, making up roughly one quarter of their total settlements: Hulata at the Hula Lake; Ginosar, Ein Gev, and Ma’agan on the Kinneret; and Mishmar HaYam, HaHotrim, Nahsholim, Ma’agan Michael, Ein HaYam, Sdot Yam, Galil Yam, and Palmachim on the Mediterranean coast. Aside from HaKibbutz HaMeuhad, a number of other bodies established maritime settlements: Maapilim in Atlit (which founded Neve Yam from Hever HaKvutzot) and people trained in Gdynia and the Mikhmoret cooperative in Abu Zabura next to Kfar Vitkin. Members of Hashomer Hatzair kibbutzim—Amal (today Ruchama), Ein HaMifratz, and Mishmar Zevulun (today Kfar Masaryk), and Hever HaKvutzot’s Nir Haim group (today Nir Am)—also worked at the Haifa port

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Maritime Education and Training An additional and important element in the bond that developed between the Mandate-era Yishuv and the sea and its professions was the education and training put into place. Three central bodies were responsible for maritime training and education: the maritime departments in the sports associations, the water sports associations, and the nautical school next to the Technion in Haifa. The various activities that took place, whose goal was to cultivate an affinity to the sea and to raise the professional seafaring level, also served to reinforce the national identity of youth and the Yishuv in general. The foundations for maritime training were laid by the sports associations and youth movements, who—beginning in the twenties—allotted space within their activities for maritime undertakings. Maccabi, which represented the center bloc, Hapoel, which represented the left, and Betar, which represented the right, each established sea divisions. At the same time, non partisan water sports associations were established in the twenties, foremost Zevulun, designed entirely to advance the idea of water sports. Each of these frameworks expanded their activities and number of members over time, including the period of the Second World War and the subsequent years. Hundreds of members from their ranks joined the British navy—as well as commercial companies—during the war. The associations trained youth for leadership, for command, and for battling the sea, fortifying them and providing them with characteristics that were of great use in their service as officers and commanders. Activities in water sports associations and maritime divisions served as cover for defense-related activities as well, particularly in light of the importance of the sea as a central artery for bringing survivors to the land—a task whose importance became clearer and clearer near the end of the Second World War and in its aftermath. Palyam took pains to aid covert immigration and maritime activity against the British. On the eve of the war, foundations were laid for one of the most prominent milestones in Jewish maritime education: the establishment of a nautical school attached to the Technion in Haifa. The first naval academy was in Civitavecchia in Italy, founded in 1934 at the initiative of Betar, but it was forced to close its gates four years later when relations between Italy and Nazi Germany grew closer. The nautical school was the realization of an idea first articulated in the early twenties in Gurvitz’s Water Commission, which posited that Jewish maritime sovereignty in the Land of Israel would be possible with the foundation of a school for theoretical studies and training in the different maritime occupations. The school in Haifa was active during the war and even expanded its activities, in no small part due to the involvement and support of the British.

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The Yishuv’s central leadership institutions were aware of the educational potential in maritime activities and the place of the different associations in the field; they made efforts to exert their authority over the growing activity, primarily through the Jewish Agency’s Maritime and Fisheries Department and the PML. These two bodies were occupied with informational activities, maritime literature, advancing maritime education and training, the provision of budgets to the maritime youth associations and the nautical school, aid in the purchase of vessels, and the like. From the end of the Second World War until the establishment of the State of Israel, the national-educational activities in the maritime field continued—with the winds of impending national sovereignty—and the leadership’s attempts to expand its influence in the world of maritime education and training increased. At the end of the Second World War, the Palmach established a sea company, the Palmaḥ Yami or Palyam, which provided aid in illegal immigration. The different courses that Palyam’s members underwent in the few years that remained before the establishment of the state gave the participants no small amount of maritime training and constituted an important stage in the leadership’s recognition of the significance of the sea in matters of defense for the imminent state. The great experience garnered during the time of clandestine immigration was a boon during the War of Independence. Many of the Palyam’s members joined the navy, as did volunteers who had served in the British navy during the Second World War; they contributed to the building of a significant military naval force for the State of Israel in its early years. Each of the fields examined—ports, shipping, fisheries and fishing settlements, and maritime education and training—saw a gradual shift in the Yishuv’s attitude toward the sea and its shores over the course of the Mandate period. The Jewish hold on the coast grew, as did its maritime awareness. Our examination of these processes leads to the first conclusion that arises from our study: in the mid-thirties, a maritime revolution began within the Yishuv in the Land of Israel. This revolution was expressed in four primary dimensions: first, the Yishuv’s maritime awareness, especially in the activities of water sports divisions and associations; second, within the Yishuv leadership, which began to recognize the sea and its importance and to act using channels that would cement its hold on it; third, in geographic settlement, with the Jews first holding the sea and its shores, the areas near the Mediterranean, and the shores of Lake Kinneret and the Hula Lake, that had not been settled before; and finally the status of the Jewish sea worker, entering the field of maritime professions, tying this to the settlement activity and the evolving national struggle. The Yishuv underwent a significant change in its understanding of the image and importance of control over the sea.

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The seminal, awareness-changing period, which accelerated the maritime revolution in the Yishuv’s consciousness and brought these elements into relief took place, undoubtably, between April and May in 1936, when the Jaffa port was closed to Jews and the Tel Aviv port subsequently opened. These two events underline two sides of the same coin: First, an enormous challenge faced the Yishuv with the closure of the Jaffa port and the resulting lack of an outlet to the sea. Second, the establishment of the first Jewish port in the days of rioting illustrated the settlement, economic, and political potential of the sea. It was thus possible for the Yishuv to view the Mediterranean Sea, for the first time, not as a national boundary but rather as the continuation of the land, a space that connected the land to the rest of the world and the Yishuv to Diaspora Jewry across the sea. This paved the way to the elevated status of sea workers; they finally began to be perceived as level with the pioneers who worked the land. Three central factors led to this revolution in the Yishuv’s attitude toward the sea: The first was the burgeoning nationalistic conflict and the increased importance of the sea to the Yishuv’s defensive and economic resilience, which brought the need to divert national resources to maritime fields to the forefront. The leading efforts went to opening a sovereign port, but efforts such as purchasing trawlers or supporting the first fishing settlements were also part of the momentum. The second was the economic factor, and in particular capital brought to the Jewish market in the years of economic prosperity, which characterized the first half of the thirties; this was primarily due to the Fifth Aliyah, which was more affluent than the waves that preceded it. The third was the professional element; graduates of European nautical schools who immigrated to the Land of Israel and entered the seafaring and fishing realms, and later graduates of the nautical schools in Civitavecchia and Haifa and those who served in the British navy, all enhanced the Yishuv’s maritime skills, which had been sparse when Jews first began to settle in the land.

Ideologies and Tensions about the Sea in the Mandate-Era Yishuv The events discussed in this book were presented against the backdrop of several tensions and ideologies that characterized the Yishuv at the time. First were the leadership’s political and diplomatic views about the sea, expressed on two poles: At one end, the Yishuv’s central leadership and the Jewish Agency —at least until the mid-thirties—reflected the workers’ perspective, which did not attribute much importance to the sea; it was viewed as a boundary for Jews’ dispersion and settlement activities, which focused on conquering land

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and bringing life to desolation. On the other end of the spectrum, the Revisionist movement saw territory as boundaryless and viewed the land more expansively, perceiving the sea as a central element within the land. Tensions rose between right and left on this score, with the Revisionists claiming that the Zionist institutions were awakening too slowly to the sea’s possibilities, that the leadership had not developed a maritime tradition, and that the twenties and early thirties were squandered on failed efforts due to the lack of institutional support, damaging the Yishuv. This was, according to the Revisionists, also the source of the national institutions’ dismissive attitude toward the sea, its development, and its professions—especially noticeable in its overlooking Betar, its maritime division, and its naval academy in Civitavecchia. The left, for its part, claimed that until the mid-thirties, circumstances and the limited means available to the Zionist movement dictated a series of priorities that made it impossible to invest in land-based agriculture and settlement while also investing in the development of the sea and its professions. In our study, we found that the leadership—led by David Ben-Gurion—underwent a shift in attitude; people began to insist that the sea was not a boundary but rather an opportunity to further bolster what would soon be a state. Ben-Gurion’s words in mid-1932, that “the Mediterranean Sea should be viewed not as the border, but as the continuation of our land,” constituted a novelty in the way in which the central leadership viewed the sea and its role in reestablishing the nation in its land. The founding of the Maritime Department, and of the Palyam near the end of the Second World War, were, in retrospect, the cornerstones for the institutional-political approach to the sea, led by Ben-Gurion. It was an expression of the great importance he attributed to establishing a naval force and controlling the sea passages as central to the political and economic power of the state in the making. From a certain point, Ben-Gurion also saw the sea as a political apparatus for increasing the nation’s strength and prestige and for shaping its destiny. The establishment of the Jewish Agency’s Maritime and Fisheries Department and the frameworks that acted within it, especially the PML and Nahshon, highlighted the political importance that the central leadership had begun to attribute to the sea since the middle of the Mandate period— even at the expense of “stealing” credit from the circles on the right that were first to become active on the issue. The Jewish Agency’s appeal for authority over maritime activity was expressed clearly in its link to the maritime divisions and sports associations, some of which, of course, represented political groups in the Yishuv. It was also expressed in the Maritime Department and PML’s aspiration to enact as broad sponsorship as possible over maritime training and the education that accompanied it. One prominent example was Sea Day, a joint venture of the Maritime Department and the PML, which emphasized the

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national character of the day and the place of the sea in the national rebirth; right from the start, conflicts cropped up between right and left regarding the origins of Jewish sea ventures and who was a recognized partner in the creation of the Land of Israel’s maritime ethos. An additional dimension of the ideological conflicts that arose during this time period was the tension between the socialist-worker camp, advocate of the “group” and joint agricultural settlements, and the reality of life for the sea workers, especially sailors and fishermen, who spent their time aboard ships, distanced from the group, and were often away from home for extended periods of time. The seamen were thus perceived as damaging to the group principle—whether because they were opposed to the idea or because they were indifferent to it. Gurvitz, in the twenties, was the first to attempt to somehow integrate the two central worldviews about the desired social order—socialist and capitalist. His ideas about training fishermen reflected a workers’ approach, but his plan included encouraging independent commerce, reflecting a middle-class, entrepreneurial worldview. Whether Gurvitz was indeed attempting to incorporate conflicting worker-civic approaches or whether this was the opportunistic conduct of a person attempting to advance a unique plan by mustering whatever resources were available, his ideas were not executed at that time, and the various attempts made during the twenties and early thirties in the field of fishery and sailing did not come to fruition. Aside from the fact that the attempts received insufficient external support, they also did not contain an optimal amount of collaboration—they required the constant presence characteristic of agricultural work, leading to extended absences, ultimately being socially damaging to the group. Bridging these gaps, maintaining a joint lifestyle while at the same time cultivating fishing settlements and sea professions such as fishery and sailing, was possible only once the Yishuv’s central leadership institutions became involved and shaped a policy. This policy included providing aid to those settlements during crisis, supporting them, assisting them in enhancing fishing methods, offering professional help, and providing professional information and guidance—all of which helped the sea workers cope with their difficult lifestyles in one way or another. The conflict between the socialist perspective, represented by the central national leadership, and the individualistic perspective, characteristic of the seafarers—primarily the fishermen and sailors—can also be tied, it would appear, to the Jewish Agency’s desire to coordinate all activity of the maritime divisions and associations under its auspices. While the Jewish Agency’s efforts were directed at all groups, it seems that it focused primarily on Zevulun. Zevulun represented the civil camp and had begun to grow and expand in the thirties; it was considered the largest of all of the non-partisan maritime associations. Negotiations be-

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tween the Maritime Department and Zevulun went on for years; they illustrate the great importance the Jewish Agency attributed to maintaining authority over the Jewish hold on the sea and the public associations’ activities. This was a central element in the Yishuv leadership’s political goal in the maritime realm: making its mark as leader in the Yishuv’s conceptual approach to the sea and emphasizing the importance and advantages of the sea for the emerging national enterprise—as the Jewish hold and involvement in the sea’s various fields continued to grow in the ports, sailing, and fishing settlements. An additional ideological conflict about the sea, related to the previous one, touched to a great extent on the economic questions that stood at the center of the conflicts between the bourgeoisie, right-wing Zionists and the workers. The conflict focused on what capital the land would be built with—private or national. Private, anti-institutional enterprise existed in a number of the maritime realms, which represented in many cases the civilians; thus, it was perceived as embodying capitalism, in the face of the socialist, institutional perception espoused by those who wished for national capital to stand at the base of settlement activity. Gurvitz was a member of the first camp, emphasizing the economic advantages of the sea to the Jewish market. One prominent motivation for his initiatives in the early twenties was the desire to exploit the different nautical realms financially and to attempt to develop Jewish activity in the maritime field through the commission he founded. Nonetheless, the early attempts made in the twenties and early thirties to increase and reinforce Jewish activity in the different maritime professions—which were short-lived and only partially successful—were for the most part the product of private enterprise with nearly no involvement on the part of Yishuv’s central leadership. However, from the mid-thirties, when the central leadership drew nearer to the sea, the question of national capital began to be discussed more intensely. The Tel Aviv, in the mid-thirties, and the aggressive price war waged by the Italian company, Lloyd Triestino, was one of the first examples of the Yishuv’s conflict at the time over whether the national institutions should divert Yishuv funds to the support of private economic enterprises in financial crisis. In this case, the private companies claimed that the Yishuv leadership should be supporting the Jewish shipping pioneers, which, though based on private capital, contributed significantly to Jewish economy and society in the Land of Israel; the Yishuv leadership, for its part, was in no hurry to use its funds to support private enterprise. In the case of the Tel Aviv, it was also uninterested in risking a political conflict with Italy and Lloyd Triestino, supported as it was by the Italian government. The company, it should be noted, brought most of the immigrants to the Land of Israel at the time, and thus the Yishuv’s national interests could be put at risk.

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The discussions about the establishment of a national shipping company after the Second World War evidently led to a new peak in the tension surrounding whether private or national capital was preferred in the state-building process. The idea of establishing a national shipping company by merging existing private companies was doomed to failure. The private companies’ inability to maintain a measure of independence within the proposed framework, on one hand, and the institutions’ inability to run such a company based on national needs, on the other, made that clear. In discussions, it emerged that a shipping company that acted out of national and economic-commercial considerations at one and the same time was unfeasible. Zim’s establishment as a national company that would act only within the national interest was, then, a landmark of supreme importance in moving the sea from peripheral to central within the Yishuv leadership’s investment of national capital. It was a milestone in the growing Zionist hold on the shores of the land—and, no less important, the increasing maritime awareness and recognition of the Yishuv during the Mandate period. An additional development at the time related to the image of the sea within the Zionist movement and the Yishuv. As noted, in early Zionist ideology the sea was viewed as a space that did not, in itself, carry any significance; it was a conveyor, a space to be traversed on the way to the promised land. It was not viewed as a component of nation-building, but rather as subject to the land. In this volume, we saw that the image of the sea and its symbolic status experienced shifts; the approach transformed from one that viewed the sea as peripheral, a tool or conveyer, to one that saw the sea as having a function in and of itself, with its own advantages. While not all of those who worked at sea were suddenly perceived as equal in stature to those who worked in agriculture, while they were still esteemed at a lower level than were the “real” pioneers, a change clearly took place in the Yishuv’s attitude to all things maritime from the beginning of the Mandate period. An important landmark in this process was, of course, the establishment of the Tel Aviv port, through which the Yishuv drew closer to the sea and grew enthusiastic about it, internalizing its value and the importance of its connection to the Diaspora. Those who worked at sea, for example during the clandestine immigration, became the nation’s heroes due to immigration’s importance to the national struggle. Educational programs in schools also brought the Yishuv closer to the sea and Jewish seafaring, and, as a result, the Jewish hold on the sea’s shores grew.

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Bottom-up and Top-down History of the Zionist Hold on the Sea The struggle over the sea came to a close with the end of the British Mandate. Its results definitively favored the Yishuv. The Yishuv reached full maritime sovereignty: it ruled the land’s three ports and its internal lakes, it had a national shipping company, fishery and fish farms were very advanced, and maritime training and education had seen great progress in many channels. This volume revealed that the struggle had two clear stages, each with a different character: the first, which took place during the twenties and early thirties, was characterized by a number of local events, with nearly no involvement on the part of the Yishuv’s institutions. Gurvitz’s Water Commission, in the early twenties, the fishing groups in the Mediterranean and Lake Kinneret, and the few Jewish workers who began to work in the Haifa port functioned with no guiding hand from above; they were rooted in economic interests. Noticeable verification of this is Goldzweig’s determined action against the Jewish fishing groups in the Kinneret in the twenties. The Jewish-Arab partnership between the Goldzweig and Houri families in the Kinneret were a bulwark against the attempts of Jewish fishing groups to integrate in fishery at the lake. The partners’ opposition makes clear that despite the commencement of the national struggle at the time, both nations’ everyday activities were still dictated by professional and economic concerns. The first attempts of Jewish groups, in the twenties and early thirties, to gain a hold of Lake Kinneret were devoid of real signs of national ambition; it was also not expressed in the responses to these attempts. The Jewish-Arab partnership wished to maintain its economic status with no national or political considerations, especially not on the part of Goldzweig, the Jewish partner. The second stage in the struggle over the sea during the Mandate period began in the mid-thirties and was of an entirely different nature. With the growing national tension in the land, especially with the rioting of 1936 – 1939 and the closure of the Jaffa port to Jews, the struggle for the sea and its professions became part of the national conflict and the involvement of agents from above was noticeable. The Yishuv institutions opened bureaucratic frameworks for treating and aiding the Yishuv in the different sea professions, positioned Jewish work at ports as a national goal, helped the Jewish industries, and showed growing involvement in maritime training and education. The opening of the first Jewish port in Tel Aviv in the thirties, and the establishment of a national shipping company a decade later, were some of the apexes in the nationalization of Jewish maritime activity in the Land of Israel during the Mandate period. The open mobilization of the Yishuv’s institutions in the struggle over the sea gave the strug-

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gle a clear political meaning, as part of the growing Zionist-national struggle for control and firmer entrenchment in areas of settlement that were meant for a Jewish national home. It is also clear that alongside the gradual development of the Arab-Jewish conflict and its radicalization, the Zionists’ maritime presence took root, both geographically and professionally. Over the course of the British Mandate in the land that would become the State of Israel, the image of the sea evolved. Where at first it was marginal, its significance and potential unrecognized by the Zionist institutions, it became, with time, a source of security, economic growth, and national pride. Initial grassroots efforts gave way to institutional support, especially with the shift in seafaring sentiment in the mid-thirties. Navigating internal politics, the Jewish/Arab conflict, and the Mandate government, Jewish seafaring and maritime occupations became a deciding factor for the state: at its birth, it already had a national shipping company, control over the land’s three active ports, a flourishing fishfarming industry, a nautical training school—and a maritime sensibility that would serve it well in the years to come.

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Gravois, G. “Christian Pilgrimage in the Mediterranean Sea in the Middle Ages and Its Conceptual Ramifications.” [In Hebrew.] In Historical Society, Mediterranean Sea, 68 – 85. Great Britain, Colonial Office. Report by His Britannic Majesty’s Government to the Council of the League of Nations on the Administration Palestine and Transjordan for the Year 1937, Col. No. 146. London: Colonial Office, 1938. Great Britain, High Commissioner for Palestine. Palestine—Report of the High Commissioner on the Administration of Palestine, 1920 – 1925. London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1925. Gross, Nachum T. “The Economic Policy of the Government of Palestine during the Mandate Period.” [In Hebrew.] Cathedra 24 (1982): 153 – 80. Gross, Nachum T. “Haifa at the Beginning of the Industrialization in Palestine.” [In Hebrew.] ha-Rivon le-Kalkala 106 (1980): 308 – 19. Gurevich, David. Jewish Manufacture, Transportation, and Commerce: Report and General Abstracts of the Census taken in 1937. [In Hebrew.] N.p.: Department of Trade and Industry, Jewish Agency for Palestine, 1939. Gurevich, David and Aharon Graetz. Jewish Agricultural Settlement in Palestine—A General Survey and Statistical Abstracts. [In Hebrew.] Jerusalem: Statistics Department of the Jewish Agency, 1938. Gvati, Haim. A Century of Settlement: The Story of Jewish Settlement in the Land of Israel. [In Hebrew.] Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 1981. Hacohen, David. “Fragments of Memories.” [In Hebrew.] In Nedava, Haifa, 70 – 77. Hacohen, David. Time to Tell: An Israeli Life, 1898 – 1984. New York: Cornwall Books, 1985. Hadari, Zeev. Second Exodus: The Full Story of Jewish Illegal Immigration to Palestine, 1945 – 1948. London, UK: Vallentine Mitchell, 1991. Hadari, Zeev and Zeev Tsahor. Voyage to Freedom: An Episode in the Illegal Immigration to Palestine. London, UK: Vallentine Mitchell, 1985. Haifa Workers’ Council. The Histadrut in Haifa, 1933 – 1939. [In Hebrew.] Haifa: Haifa Workers’ Council, 1939. Halamish, Aviva. A Dual Race against Time: Zionist Immigration Policy in the 1930s. [In Hebrew.] Jerusalem: Yad Izhak Ben-Zvi, 2006. Halamish, Aviva. “From ‘Leverage’ to ‘Fist’: The Role of the Haapala in the Struggle for the Land of Israel, 1945 – 1948.” [In Hebrew] In Shiran, Naval Arena, 63 – 85. Halamish, Aviva. Immigration and Absorption Policy of the Zionist Organization 1931 – 1937. [In Hebrew.] Tel Aviv, 1995. Halamish, Aviva. “Nostalgia in Zionist History and Historiography.” [In Hebrew.] In Culture, Memory and History: Essays in Honor of Anita Shapira, edited by Meir Chazan and Uri Cohen, 747 – 65. Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University, 2012. Halevy, Dotan. “Drinking (Beer) from the Sea of Gaza: The Rise and Fall of Gaza’s Maritime Trade in the Late Ottoman Period.” [In Hebrew.] The New East 55 (2016): 35 – 59. Hanoch, Gershon, ed. Fishing Settlements: A Compendium in advance of the Conference. [In Hebrew.] Tel Aviv: Histadrut Hapoalim Hahaklaiim Be’eretz Yisrael, 1944. Harif, Hagai. Zionism of Muscles: The Political Functions of Representative Sport in Eretz Israel and in the State of Israel, 1989 – 1960. [In Hebrew.] Jerusalem: Yad Izhak Ben-Zvi, 2011.

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Yazbak, Mahmoud. “Haifa in the Latter Period of the Ottoman Rule: Selected Issues in the Development of Administration and Society.” [In Hebrew.] PhD diss., University of Haifa, 1992. Yehuda. “Sdot Yam’s Way in Caesarea.” [In Hebrew.] In Hanoch, Fishing Settlements, 83 – 89. Yekutieli, Joseph and David Tidhar. Maccabi Album, Jaffa-Tel Aviv (1906 – 1956). [In Hebrew.] Tel Aviv: Haaguda, 1957. Yellin, Ita. To My Children: My Memoirs. [In Hebrew.] Jerusalem: Dfus Meha’erev, 1941. Yerachmiel. “From Then until Today.” [In Hebrew.] In Kibbutz Hulata, Five Years, 24 – 29. Yizrael, R. “The Campaign for Tiberias in the War of Independence.” [In Hebrew.] Mitov Teveria 7 (1988/9): 32 – 47. Zakai, Miriam. Avraham Zakai: Between Land and Sea. [In Hebrew.] Tel Aviv, 2001. Zalmona, Yigal and Tamar Manor-Friedman. To the East: Orientalism in the Arts in Israel. Jerusalem: The Israel Museum, 1998. Zeitlin, Yitshak. Forty Years of the Zevulun Sailors’ Union, 1928 – 1968. [In Hebrew.] Tel Aviv: Zevulun Sailors’ Union, 1968. Zelinger, Gideon and Nechama Doueck. Zim through the Years 1945 – 1995: Jubilee Album. [In Hebrew.] Haifa: Zim, 1995. Zertal, Idith. From Catastrophe to Power: Holocaust Survivors and the Emergence of Israel. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998. The Zionist Executive. Decisions of the Nineteenth Zionist Congress, Lucerne, June 20– September 6, 1935. [In Hebrew.] Jerusalem: Zionist Organization Executive, 1937. The Zionist Executive. The Twentieth Zionist Congress (August 3 – 16, 1937): A Stenographic Report. [In Hebrew.] Jerusalem: World Zionist Organization, 1938. Zohar, Avraham. The Palyam: The Story of the Naval Palmach and Nautical Activity in the Haganah. [In Hebrew.] Jerusalem: Merkaz Hahasbara Vemisrad Hahinukh, 1994. Zohar, Avraham and Meir Pail. Naval Palmach (Palyam). [In Hebrew.] Tel Aviv: Ministry of Defense, 2001. Zuckerman, Herzl. “Notes.” [In Hebrew.] In Lutsky, Tel Aviv Port, 276 – 82.

Archives Ben-Gurion Archives, Sde Boker Central Zionist Archives, Jerusalem (CZA) Haganah Historical Archives, Tel Aviv (HHA) Haifa Municipal Archives, Haifa (HMA) Herzl Institute for the Study of Zionism, University of Haifa (HI) Hulata Archive, Hulata Israel State Archives, Jerusalem (ISA) Jabotinsky Institute, Tel Aviv (JI) Kfar Giladi Archive, Kfar Giladi Pinhas Lavon Institute for Labour Movement Research, Tel Aviv (LI) Tel Aviv-Jaffa Municipal Historical Archive, Tel Aviv (TAA) Yad Tabenkin Archives, Ramat Efal Zim Company Archives, Haifa (ZCA)

Index of Persons Abu-Nabbut, Muhammad 23 Abu Zaid, Kamal 73 Aharoni, Gershon 234 Al-Husseini, Amin 121 Ali, Muhammad 22 Alon, Azaria 42 Alon, Yigal 246 Altuvia, Yitzhak 124 Arlosoroff, Haim 185, 234, 246 Ashkenazi, Shalom 82 – 83 Auster, Daniel 238 Azuelos 85 Baibars 21 Bardin, Shlomo 163 – 164, 234 Bayevsky, Arie 50, 94, 99 Behum, Omer 178 Ben Ami, Oved 187, 198 Ben-Avi, Itamar 34, 126 – 127, 187 Ben-Gurion, David 1, 60, 105, 120, 130, 139, 141, 155 f., 169, 187, 224 f., 240, 249, 252, 254 f., 287, 297 Bennett, Craig 213 Ben-Nun, Yohay 287 Ben-Sira (Schiffman), Yaacov 130 f. Ben-Zvi, Rachel Yannait 82, 145 Ben-Zvi, Yitzhak 39, 82 Berkovitz, Eliezer 149 Bernstain, Arnold 144 Bertram, George Colin Lauder 229 Borchard, Jens 152 Bloch-Blumenfeld, David 53 Bracha 83 Brandeis, Louis 126 Braudel, Fernand 9 Borstein, Levi 45 Carmel, Alex 30 Caspi, Yaakov 254 f. Chancellor, John 79 Cohen, Zalman 205 – 207 Dan, Hillel

72, 260

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110633528-010

Diamond, Henrietta 100, 102 f., 187 Dinns, Jacob 33 Dizengoff, Meir 128, 130, 132, 139 Efrati, Binyamin 61 Elbo, Yitzhak 83, 111, 113 Erlich, Gershon 168, 224 Ettinger, Akiva 53 – 54 Florentin, David 111 Fusco, Nicola 194 Gatineau 83 f. George VI, king of England 134 Goitein, Shelomo Dov 10 Goldberg, Leah 142 Goldzweig, Meir Leib 33, 86 – 91, 172, 175, 177, 229 f., 301 Goldzweig, Mino 177, 229 Goldzweig, Shlomo 86 f., 177 Gruenbaum, Yitzhak 268 Gurvitz, Meir 37 – 39, 41 – 44, 46, 48 – 50, 53, 60, 98 f., 103, 298 f. Guthrie and Morduch 263 Hankin, Yehoshua 178, 187 Harris and Dixon 260 – 265, 268 – 270, 272 Hattab 85 Hayam, Zeev 75, 94, 99, 101, 116, 130, 141, 151, 163, 186, 234, 280 Helpern, Jeremiah 46, 93, 98, 191 f., 195, 198 Herskovitz, Bernard 144, 152 f. Herzl, Theodor 12 – 14, 16, 35, 100 Holzman, Yaakov 90 Hoofien, Eliezer Siegfried 129, 133, 140 Hornell, James 78 f., 88 Horovitz, Nahum 178, 232 Houri 33, 86 – 89, 91, 172, 174 f., 177, 180, 229 f., 301 Hoz, Dov 145, 242 Hushi, Abba 68, 109, 113 – 117, 119 f., 122 f., 148, 158, 165

Index of Persons

Itzkovitz, Volodia (see Hayam, Zeev) Jabotinsky, Ze’ev 6, 12, 97 – 98, 189, 190 – 191, 193 – 194, 197, 239 Kaplan, Eliezer 257 Katinka, Baruch 38, 45 Katz, Yaacov 179, 213, 216 Katznelson, Berl 26, 145 Keith-Roach, Edward 95 Kipnis, Levin 282 Kostika, Shlomo 181, 232, 242 Krishner, Yefim 195 Landman, Amos 254 f. Leibovitz, Haim 99 Levi, Yitzhak 89 Levy, Shabtai 238, 254 f. Lieberman, Zvi 83 Lifshitz, Avraham 45 Lissner, Helmut 279 Loewinger, D. 214 Lydekker, Guy Onslow 188, 202, 207, 234, 238 MacDonald, Ramsay 68 MacGregor, John 32 Maharshek, Binyanin 170 Meirovitz, Bar-Kochba 19, 92, 130, 156, 174 f., 228, 257 Messina, Ignazio 149 Meyerson (Meir), Golda 145, 157, 268 Michaeli, Uri 268 Miller, Robert Stevenson 164 f., 234 f., 270, 281 Morrison, David 270 Moser, Zechariah 213 Nahmani, Joseph 228 Nameri, David (Davidka) Napoleon 22 f. Nordau, Max 12 f., 16 Novomeysky, Moshe 2 Oliphant, Laurence Palmer, Anthony

32 243

241

325

Palmer, Frederick 56, 65 Perach, Zalman 245 Pevzner, Shmuel 68 Pich, Gustav 170 f. Pirrene, Henri 10 Plantovsky, Shlomo 90 Prawer, Joshua 9 Prince Albert I 48 Pollack, Michael 74 Raphael, Morris 113 Remez, David 140, 143, 148, 157 – 159, 168, 238, 255, 259, 268 Rendel, Palmer & Tritton 56, 65 Reno & Abu Zaid 111, 123 Repetur, Berl 67 – 68, 72, 106, 113, 125, 170 Ribotsky, Avraham 39, 46 Ricardo-Bertram, Cicely Kate 229 Rodnitzki, Pinia (Pinhas Ashad) 61 Rokach, Isaac 60, 73 Rokach, Israel 103, 185, 188, 251 Rokach, Shimon 27 Rosenfeld, Aharon 123 Rosengart, Moshe 76 f. Rosenthal, Gidon 168, 224 Roth, Joseph 15 Rothschild, Edmond James 52 – 54 Rutenberg, Pinhas 72 Sadeh, Yitzhak 72, 241, 244 f. Salam, Salim Bek 178 Samuel, Herbert 58 Sapir, Moshe Ben-Zion 45 Sarfati brothers 111 Schmerling, Haim Yisrael 27 Schumacher, Gottleib 29 Schwartz, Mordechai 212 Seligman, Adrian 164 Sharett, Moshe 113, 123, 147, 188 Shavit, Yaacov 17 Shechter, Eliezer 142 Shochat, Amiram 243 Shragai, Shlomo Zalman 238 Slouschz, Alexander 38 Slouschz, Nahum 16, 38 Sokolow, Nahum 126

326

Index of Persons

Steinitz, Walter 49 Stevens, Harry 254 Strumpf-Rechav, Gusta

Ussishkin, Menachem Uziel, Baruch 112 f.

39, 84

260, 264 f.

Tabenkin, Yitzhak 118, 191 Tal (Milak), Shimon 213 f. Tankus, Shmuel 97, 185, 235 f., 242, 244, 282 Tishbi, Nahum 80, 83 f., 123 Tolkowsky, Shmuel 57 f., 160, 188, 259 Tristram, Henry Baker 32 Trumpeldor, Joseph 89 Tuvim, Emanuel 99 – 101, 149, 163, 186, 188 Twain, Mark 32

Wauchope, Arthur 79, 108, 134, 139 Weizmann, Chaim 126, 141, 273 Windmiller, H. R. 94 Wirtz, Aliza 236 f. Wydra, Naftali 19, 156 f., 175, 208, 213, 228, 230, 232, 260, 265, 269 Yaffe brothers 90 Yaffe, Katriel 90, 130, 241 – 243 Yaish, Masoud 91 Zakai, Avraham 246 Zitzer, Branco 212 f.

Index of Subjects Adina 153 Agoor 153 Ahdut Ha’avoda 53 Alexandrovitch brothers 206 Alisa 143, 147, 152, 158, 226, 286 Altneuland 14 Amal 143, 147, 152 f., 158 Amatos 153 American Palestine Line 74 Amos 153, 246 Antar 153 Arab Higher Committee 64, 121 f., 254 Arab Revolt (1936 – 1939) 3, 60, 66, 107, 120, 122 f., 125 f., 128, 198, 250 Association of Officers and Mechanics of the Palestine Merchant Fleet 94 Association of Sephardi Jews 185 Atid Navigation Company Ltd. 134, 143, 146 – 147, 149, 152 – 154, 158, 246 f., 259, 272 Atzila 151 Aviron 268 Balfour Declaration 126, 139 Barbel 77 Betar 16, 93, 97 f., 169, 184, 189 – 194, 196, 283, 294, 297 Bikhora 166 f., 171, 224 Bimbash 124 Blue Funnel Line 262 breakwater 66, 71, 111 British Navy 4, 22, 151, 164, 201, 203, 205, 207 f., 235, 247, 262 f., 282, 284 – 287, 291, 294 – 296 Caesarea 222, 226 Campbell Riot 112 Cap Pilar 164, 234 Carola 152 Carp 175, 212 – 215, 218, 220, 232 cast net 30, 76 cement 63, 68, 72, 74 f., 117, 130 – 132, 141, 151, 168, 249, 281, 295 https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110633528-011

The Center for Local Produce 148 Chamber of Commerce/Chamber of Shipping 129, 254, 281 Chaterty 130 Coal 68, 121, 125, 193 Coastal fishing 76, 78, 199, 211, 222, 227, 233 Committee for Haifa 112 f. Committee for the Building of Jaffa Port 58 Company for the Development of Tiberias 230 Conquest of the Sea 6 f., 10, 16, 37, 60, 98, 105, 112 f., 117 f., 142, 157, 161 f., 191, 194 – 196, 206, 224, 239, 282, 289 Davar 106, 142 Degel Zion 185 Department of Agriculture 77, 175, 292 Department of Trade and Industry 80, 83, 90 – 92, 123 Diaspora 16, 43, 105, 140 f., 155 f., 158, 193, 240, 256, 296, 300 Dolphin 97, 186 Dora 152 Dov 242 Dragnet 31 Dynamite 78 f. Education Department, Jewish National Council 161, 235 – 236, 239, 248, 280, 282 El ha-Yam 161 Elitzur 185 f., 280 Etzel (see Irgun Tzvai Leumi) Fairplay 152 f. Fever 33, 83 Fifth Aliyah (1931 – 1939) 4, 19, 291, 296 First Aliyah (1882 – 1903) 26 First World War (1914 – 1918) 11, 25, 28, 30, 34 – 36, 38, 41, 43, 45, 59, 65, 77, 82, 96, 103, 106, 127, 136, 178, 289, 292 Fisheries Ordinance 77 – 79

328

Index of Subjects

Fish Farmers Association fishhook array 31

218

Galilah 273 Gdud HaAvoda (see also Labor Brigade) General Zionists 38, 95, 185 German Youth Society 178 Ghawarina tribe 32 Gillnet 30 Gordonia-Maapilim 160, 171, 223, 275 Gozal (ship) 74 – 75 Gravel 72, 87, 90, 225

81

HaAhat 193 Haapala 95, 283 Haavara Agreement 143 HaDag 89 Haganah 63, 97, 125. 172, 177, 190, 193, 228, 240 – 243, 245 f., 252, 275, 283, 293 HaHof 61 Haifa Workers’ Council 68 f., 72, 94, 107, 109, 113 – 116, 120 f., 123 – 125, 150, 158, 183, 202, 245, 254, 290 Haim Arlosoroff 185, 234, 246 HaKibbutz HaMeuhad 60, 117 f., 135, 183, 222, 226, 242, 293 HaKovesh 81, 83 – 85 HaNoar HaOved 117, 167, 178, 183, 224 HaNamal 61 HaPoel 95 – 97, 131, 162, 184, 205, 207, 234 – 238, 241, 256, 280, 294 HaPoel HaMizrachi 90, 185 HaPoel Hatzair 71, 83, 89 Har Carmel 100, 143, 147, 149 – 150, 158 Har Zion 100, 143, 147, 149 – 151, 158 – 159 HaShomer 89, 228 HaShomer HaTzair 68, 75, 81, 293 Hatikva 145, 238 HaTzofim HaKshishim 184 Hebrew Coachmen’s Group at the Jaffa port 61 Hebrew sea 16, 18 Hebrew Shipping Alliance 195, 198 HeHalutz Movment 89, 193, 222 HeHalutz (ship) 45 – 47, 74, 94 Hejaz railway 29

Hiram 68 Histadrut (General Federation of Labor) 43, 67, 69, 71, 73, 89, 94, 97, 100, 115 – 117, 122, 124 – 126, 133, 152, 156 – 158, 167, 183 – 185, 203, 221, 260, 268, 275, 290, 292 Hydrobiology 49, 238 Ichthyology 37, 50 International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES) 48 Irgun Tzvai Leumi (Etzel) 190, 252, 283, 286 Jewish Agency 3, 6, 19, 61, 71, 92, 95, 103, 106, 111, 113, 116, 124, 129, 133, 146, 148, 154 – 157, 162 – 165, 167 – 173, 178, 181, 183, 187 f., 190, 196 f., 199, 205, 214 f., 222, 225 – 227, 229, 235, 237 – 239, 241, 248, 257 – 260, 268, 271, 278, 292, 295 – 299 Jewish Agency’s Aliyah Department 61, 146, 194 Jewish Agency’s Political Department 71 – 72, 113, 147, 225 Jewish-Arab Sailors’ Union 58 Jewish Fishermen’s Association in Palestine 182 Jewish Legion 44, 46, 80, 98 Jewish Maritime and Aviation League 197 Jewish Maritime League 158 – 160 Jewish National Council 60, 148, 159, 238 Jewish National Fund (JNF) 84, 100, 212 f., 222, 228, 277 Jewish Sailors’ Association 93 Josephina 167 Kaf-Gimmel Yordei ha-Sira 243 Karish 278 Kedah 262 Kedem Palestine Line 261 f., 267, 271 Kedmah 94, 165, 258, 260, 262 – 275, 288, 292 Keren Hayesod 46, 100, 213 Kitaga Asakichi 149 Kvutzat HaYam 119

Index of Subjects

Labor Brigade (see also Gdud HaAvoda) 50, 88 – 90, 92, 255 Lake Kinneret Fishermen’s Association 276 – 277 Lausanne Treaty (1923) 110 Lev Group 89 Levant Fair 130, 134 light fishing 76, 171, 174, 200, 223, 225 – 227, 247, 276 – 277 Lili 153 Lloyd Triestino 146 f., 299 Longshoremen 26, 109 Maccabi 95 – 97, 162, 184, 294 Magen David 144 Maḥaneh ha-Elef 224 Mahsan 153 Malaria 44, 90, 180, 212, 232 Manof 115 Maoz 275 Mare Nostrum 21 Maritime and Fisheries Department 3, 19, 92, 106, 155 f., 199, 238, 257, 260, 292, 295, 297 maritime revolution 4, 8, 295 f. Milḥemet ha-Ḥaramim (the Seine War) 228 Milos 151 Minesweeper 205, 207 f., 234, 247 Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries, Palestine Government 49 Miriam 143, 151 Mossad LeAliyah Bet 210, 241, 245 f., 248, 285 f. muscular Judaism 13, 17, 95 f. Muslim 10, 21, 25, 47, 85, 284 Nahshon 157 f., 167 f., 183, 221 – 224, 226, 233, 260, 264, 275, 292, 297 Nakdimon 222, 233, 275 nautical school, Haifa 4, 19, 160, 163 f., 233, 237, 239, 242, 246, 248, 256, 280 – 282, 284 f., 294 – 296 Ne’eman 226, 275 Negbah 273 Nesher 275 Netanya Maritime College 198 netting 30, 77, 79, 225

329

New Jew 12 – 14, 16 – 18, 35, 156, 193 New Zionist Organization 190 Nisayon 279 Nissan 223, 233, 275 Nun 223, 233, 275 Oceanography 184, 238 Ochakov 81, 83 Ofek 186, 235 Ogen Cooperative 116, 158, 206 f. Operation Boatswain 97, 242 f. Ophir 278 Orient Shipping Line Co. 152 Otzar Mifalei Yam 129, 133 Palestine Fish Breeding Co. 214 Palestine Jewish Colonization Association (PICA) 47, 171, 224 f. Palestine Labor League 120 – 123 Palestine Land Development Company 87, 178 f. Palestine Lighterage and Coastal Navigation Co. Ltd 46 f. Palestine Lighterage & Supply 116 Palestine Maritime League (PML) 50, 55, 58, 75, 103, 128, 157 – 165, 168, 183, 187 – 189, 196 f., 226, 235 – 239, 248, 258 – 260, 278, 280 f., 292, 295, 297 Palestine Maritime Lloyd Ltd 99, 143, 146, 149 – 151, 154, 259 Palestine Seamen’s Association 94 Palestine Shipping Co. Ltd. 143 f., 146 – 148, 151, 154 Palestine Workers’ Fund (Kapai) 39, 45 f. Palmach 97, 210, 240, 243 – 246, 248, 276, 283 – 287, 295 Palyam (Palmacḥ Yami) 97, 185, 225 f., 245 f., 249, 253, 278, 283 – 287, 294 f., 297 Pardes 27, 72 f., 127 Peel Commission 121, 178 Peled 167 f., 224 f., 233 Phoenicia 234 PICA 47, 171, 224 f., 227 Pioneer Motor Boat Co. 45 Piracy 14 Pisciculture 183, 201, 221 – 213, 247

330

Index of Subjects

Poale Zion 43 Port Brigade 287 Port Office 116 President Arthur 74 Prika 116, 135, 158, 197 Progresso 149 Rahaf 168, 224 Revisionist movement 6, 16, 35, 93, 97, 106, 159, 189, 191 – 194, 196 f., 283, 297 Richard Borchard 134, 143, 147, 152 f., 158 Risveglio 149 Rivka 242 Sahyan 97 Sailboat 30, 185, 281 Salonica 81 f., 109 – 114, 150, 290 Salvage Division 208 Sara A 195 – 197 Sea Commission 113 Sea Day 162, 237 – 239, 241, 248, 282 – 283, 297 Sea Lion 243 Sea Scouts 97 f., 101 f., 162, 184, 186, 233, 235, 238, 256, 280 Seashell 51 f. Second Aliyah (1904 – 1914) 18, 26, 93, 96 Second Engineer 163 Second Mate 163 Second World War 3 f., 19, 50, 75, 104 f., 107, 109, 125, 135, 137, 143, 149, 151, 153 – 155, 160 f., 163, 172, 183, 185 f., 188, 198 – 203, 208, 210, 213, 221, 223, 231, 233, 235, 237 f., 240, 242, 246 – 252, 257, 262, 265, 275—276, 280, 282, 284, 288, 290 f., 293 – 295, 297, 300 Snapir 167 f., 171, 221, 224, 233 Snunit 205 Solel Boneh 67, 71 f., 116, 124, 156, 203, 206, 245, 253 f., 260, 287 Spearfishing 30 Special Operations Executive 242 f. State of Israel 4, 8, 255, 270, 273, 280, 295, 302 Stevedore 73, 114 f., 121 Straits Steamship 262

Sykes-Picot Agreement 65 Synagogue 18, 144 Syrian-Ottoman Company for Agriculture 79, 178 f. Tel Aviv (ship) 100, 143 – 149, 151, 158, 199, 299 Tel Aviv Hebrew Sea Scouts 98 Tel Aviv Port and Transportation Committee 129 Telegraph 11, 24, 55 Tel Hai Fund 195, 197, 208 Theodor Herzl 193 Third Aliyah (1919 – 1923) 39, 43 Tilapia 77, 229 Tirza 242 Tnuva 45, 218, 237, 279 Tower and Stockade (Homa u-Migdal) 118, 172, 213, 241 Trawler 76, 166 f., 223, 225 f. Unbrange and Gavavra Marsha Union 193

73

Valdora 281 Velos 193, 241 War of Independence (1948) 207, 231 f., 253, 276 f., 284, 286 f., 293, 295 Water Commission 3, 36, 38 – 43, 45 f., 48 – 50, 52 – 55, 294, 301 Yarkonim 33 Yishuv 1 – 4, 6 – 8, 17, 19 f., 26, 34, 36, 38 f., 41 f., 44 f., 47, 49, 54 f., 60, 62 – 64, 67, 69 f., 74, 80, 87, 92 f., 95, 102 – 105, 110, 112, 115, 120, 125 f., 128 f., 131, 133 f., 137, 139 – 141, 143, 145 – 149, 154 – 156, 158 – 162, 165 f., 168, 177, 187 – 192, 196 – 200, 203 – 206, 209 f., 212 f., 218, 220, 224, 227, 230, 236, 238 – 241, 243, 247 – 249, 251, 254, 256 – 259, 262, 267 f., 272, 278, 280, 284, 288 – 301 Zevulun Seafarers Association 37, 50, 75, 98 – 103, 131, 162, 165, 170, 184, 186 f.,

Index of Subjects

197, 233, 235, 238 f., 256, 283, 292 – 294, 298 Zim (Palestine Navigation Company Limited) 4, 7, 19, 48, 145, 256, 258 – 265, 268 – 273, 275, 288, 291, 300 Zionist Commission 39, 43, 48, 81

331

Zionist Congress, 1898 13 Zionist Congress, 1935 19, 145, 156, 257 Zionist movement 7, 12, 14, 16 f., 39, 43, 56, 158, 185, 191, 239, 249, 289, 297, 300

Index of Places Abu Zabura 171, 277, 293 Acre 21, 28 f., 31, 54, 56, 65, 76, 81, 83 – 85, 92, 170 f. Afek 118, 222 Akhziv 31, 76 Alexander River 277 Alexandria 45, 47, 75, 153, 210 Amal 293 Antwerp 263 – 267, 269, 272 Ashdod 171 Ashdot Ya’akov 241 Ashkelon 56 Asi River 213 f. Astrakhan 33 f., 44 Atlit 31, 44, 50, 54, 66, 71 f., 76, 81, 83, 92, 94, 99, 104, 160, 170 f., 185, 223, 225, 235 f., 293 Baku 33 Bari 166 Barrow 262 Bat Galim 38, 236 Batiha 86 – 87, 91, 172 – 175, 177, 227 – 230 Bat Yam 99, 187, 281 Beirut 47, 63, 75, 167, 184, 252, 281 Beit HaShita 245 Beit Shean Valley 213, 215 – 217, 228 Belgium 263, 278 Bethsaida 32 Black Sea 149, 154 Brăila 152 Brid Stream 79 Buchach 68 Budapest 152 Bulgaria 48 Caesarea 31, 56, 76, 171, 205 f., 224 – 227, 235, 245, 280, 286 Carmel 58, 121, 224 Canada 103, 186 Cape Town 160 Caspian Sea 33, 44, 94 https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110633528-012

Ceylon 78 Civitavecchia 16, 193 f., 197, 294, 296 f. Constanţa 149 – 151 Copenhagen 48, 126 Crete 207 Cyprus 47, 75, 153, 159, 168, 184, 198, 224, 234, 276, 278, 281 Damascus 24, 28 f., 33 Daraa 29 f. Dardara 277 Dead Sea 2, 57 Degania 89 f., 93, 231, 280 Egypt 22, 25, 28, 47 f., 116, 141, 153, 201, 203, 234, 252 Ein Afek 212 Ein Gev 54, 76, 119, 172 f., 175 f., 183, 207, 221, 228, 230 f., 236, 276, 293 Ein HaMifratz 117, 293 Ein Harod 118, 224 El Alamein 200, 203 f. Estonia 37 Far’a spring 54 Far East 149, 262 France 11, 22, 48, 91, 256, 283 French Hospital (Jaffa) 62 f. French Riviera 18 Galaţi 152 Gate of Zion 134 Gaza 28, 54, 56, 235, 252 Gdynia 103, 159 – 160, 170, 186 f., 222, 293 Geneva 37 George Town 262 Germany 29, 62, 95, 113, 143 f., 152, 157, 165, 172, 185, 200 – 202, 213, 249, 279, 294 Ginosar 172, 174, 183, 221, 228 – 230, 242, 276, 293 Givat Haim 117 Givat HaShlosha 170, 285

Index of Places

Grado 278 Greece 31, 48, 82, 85, 109 f., 112 f., 140, 256 Guinea 267 Hadassah hospital, Jerusalem 83 Hadera 33, 44, 99, 187, 277 HaHotrim 119, 293 Haifa Port 14, 23, 25, 29 f., 36, 44 f., 55 – 59, 63 – 69, 71 – 75, 78, 84 f., 96, 104 – 130, 135, 137 f., 143 – 145, 150 f., 157 – 159, 171, 191, 196, 198, 201 – 204, 206, 223 – 226, 245, 247, 250, 252 f., 255 f., 274, 279, 287 f., 290 f., 293, 301 Hamburg 144, 152 f. Hebrew University 74, 279 Hebron 27 f. Hejaz 29 Herzliya 37, 99, 186, 236 Herzliya Gymnasium 37, 95 Hula Lake 2, 54, 86 f., 106, 169, 175, 179 f., 182, 221, 231 f., 247, 276 f., 288, 293, 295 Hulata 54, 178 – 183, 221, 231 f., 242, 277, 293 Hula Valley 32, 177 f., 215, 217 Hungary 212 Ijmuiden 278 India 65 Indian Sea 149 Iraq 57, 65, 201 Istanbul 24 Italy 31, 48, 126, 148 f., 166, 169, 192 – 194, 197, 200 – 202, 256, 294, 299 Jaffa Port 14, 23, 25 – 28, 57 – 67, 104, 112, 121, 125 – 129, 131, 136 – 140, 191, 198, 250 f., 276, 290, 296, 301 Jenin 128 Jerusalem 13, 21, 23 – 25, 28, 33, 54 f., 60, 74, 83, 156, 185, 238 f., 287 Jezreel Valley 29, 213 Johannesburg 160 Jordan River 29, 31, 54, 80, 174, 229, 244 Jordan Valley 28, 177

333

Kfar Giladi 178, 231 Kfar Masaryk 117, 293 Kfar Vitkin 236, 277, 280 f., 293 Kiryat Binyamin 225 Kiryat Haim 206, 223 f., 226, 241, 285 Kiryat Motzkin 117, 224, 245 Kishon River 32 Kurdani 212 – 214, 222, 232 Kursi 87, 228 – 230 Lake Kinneret (or “the Kinneret”) 2, 30, 32 f., 36, 54, 80 f., 85 – 91, 93, 106, 168 f., 172 – 175, 177 f., 205 f., 221, 227 – 233, 236 f., 244, 247, 276 f., 288, 292 f., 295, 301 Land of Israel 1 f., 4, 6 f., 13, 16 – 20, 26, 34 – 37, 40 – 42, 44, 46 – 49, 52, 54, 74, 82, 85, 89, 93 – 100, 102 – 106, 111 f., 114, 126, 132, 139 – 141, 143 – 147, 149 – 155, 160, 162, 164, 166, 168, 170, 185 f., 188 f., 192 f., 195 – 198, 200 f., 205, 210, 212 – 214, 221, 234, 238 – 240, 249 f., 252, 259, 261 f., 267 – 269, 272 f., 276, 279 f., 285, 288, 290 – 292, 294 – 296, 298 f., 301 Latakia 75, 153 Latvia 97, 193 Lebanon 47, 86, 153, 237 Leningrad 99 Limassol 267 Liverpool 151 London 58, 65, 75, 100, 163 f., 186, 260 f., 265 f. Ma’abarot 117, 285 Ma’agan 277, 293 Madrid 48 Malta 76, 166 Maritime Museum 50, 237 f., 248 Marjayoun 86 Marseilles 262, 267, 270 Mecca 28 f. Medina 29 Mediterranean Sea 2, 9, 16 f., 22, 38, 41, 48, 65, 75, 105 f., 155, 169, 172, 195 f., 200 – 202, 207, 210, 221, 224, 227, 247, 252, 265, 296 f.

334

Index of Places

Migdal (beach next to Gaza) 54 Migdal (colony) 89 Mikhmoret 31, 171, 277 f., 293 Mikveh Israel 212 Mishmar HaYam 54, 76, 118, 170, 172, 206, 222 f., 275, 293 Monaco 48 f.

Rhodes 281 Riga 97, 193 Rishon Letzion 62, 95, 126 Romania 48, 140, 143, 149, 151 f. Rome 16, 20, 193 Rosh Hanikra 171 Ruhama 117, 119

Na’an 224 Naharayim 72, 90, 174 Nahariya 171, 185, 207, 236, 280 f. Nautical School, Haifa 4, 19, 157, 160, 163 – 165, 233, 237, 239, 242, 246, 248, 256, 280 – 282, 284 f., 294 – 296 Nazareth 33 Nesher cement factory 74 Netanya 99, 187, 198, 225, 235, 281 Neve Yam 54, 170 – 172, 285, 293 New York 74, 126 Nir Am 119, 293 Nir David 213 – 215, 218, 232 Nir Haim 119, 293 North Sea 152

Sa’ar 119 Safed 33, 86, 177, 180 Salonica 39, 81 – 84, 109 – 115, 150, 290 Samra 231 Savannah 151 Sde Nahum 218 Sdot Yam 119, 167 f., 183, 206, 222, 224 – 227, 243, 245, 247, 279, 285 f., 293 Seafarers’ House (Beit Yordei ha-Yam) 237, 248, 265, 269, 271 Sea Fisheries Research Station, Haifa 278 f., 288 Sejara 50 Shavei Zion 236 Shefayim 285 Shemen factory, Haifa 205 Sidon 47, 252 Singapore 262 Solomon’s Pools 54 South Africa 160 Spain 31, 48 St. Petersburg 50, 99 Suez Canal 22, 57, 65, 201, 284 Syria 28, 40, 47, 58, 64, 178, 243

Ochakov 81 Odessa 18 Olga bay 187 Paris 37, 40, 191, 195 Penang 262 Persian Gulf 65 Petah Tikva 27, 22, 126 Pinsk 89 f. Plugat Amal 119 Plugat HaYam 75, 117 – 119, 121, 167, 170 – 172, 183, 221 – 225, 242 Plugat Nir Haim 119 Poland 38, 61, 81 f., 103, 117, 140, 159 f., 170 f., 186 f., 222 Port Said 47, 75, 151, 184, 210, 252 Qantara

63

Railway Neighborhood Ramle 28 Red Sea 2, 77, 141 Rehovot 13, 62

61

Tabha 87 Talil 179, 232, 277 Tallinn 37 Tantura 50, 52 – 54 Tartus 75 (The) Technion 19, 55, 99, 163 f., 196, 238, 246, 248, 272, 281 f., 285, 294 Tel Abu Zeitun 32 Tel Amal (see also Nir David) 213 f., 232 Tel Aviv Museum 131 Tel Aviv Port 3, 19, 61, 65 f., 85, 105, 116, 126 – 129, 131 – 138, 140 – 142, 150, 152, 157 – 159, 162, 184, 186, 196, 198 f., 201, 203, 205 – 208, 223, 238, 247,

335

Index of Places

250 – 252, 266 f., 276, 282, 290, 296, 300 Tel Ephraim 32 Thames 266 Tiberias 32, 85, 88 f., 91, 179, 228, 230, 236, 277 Tirat Zvi 185 Tobruk 153, 209 Trieste 127, 144, 146, 278 Tripoli 75, 168, 243 Tulkarm 52, 128 Tunisia 48 Turka 68 Turkey 26, 48, 112, 153 Tyre 47, 252 Tzemah 88, 231

University of Washington, Seattle USSR 283

United States 15, 37, 46, 103, 126, 158, 186, 195, 207, 234, 283 Umm Juni 93

Zagreb 212 Zebulun Valley Zichron Yaakov

49

Vickers shipyard 262 f., 265 Vienna 152, 212 Volga River 33, 74 Wagoners’ Neighorhood

61

Yagur 68, 117, 285 Yarkon (river) 32 f., 60, 90, 100, 127, 130 f., 184, 188, 205 – 207, 238 f., 241 Yarkon (street) 81, 100 Yavne 56 Yesod HaMa’ala 178 Yugoslavia 212, 214, 222

65, 117, 171, 212 52