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Israel Affairs

ISSN: 1353-7121 (Print) 1743-9086 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/fisa20

The Israeli volunteering movement preceding the1956 war

Moshe Naor

To cite this article: Moshe Naor (2010) The Israeli volunteering movement preceding the 1956war, Israel Affairs, 16:3, 434-454, DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2010.487732

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13537121.2010.487732

Published online: 23 Jun 2010.

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The Israeli volunteering movement preceding the 1956 war

Moshe Naor*

Rothberg International School, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Mount Scopus,Jerusalem 91905, Israel

(Received 10 January 2009; final version received 13 April 2010)

This article deals with the Israeli volunteering movement that preceded theoutbreak of the 1956 war and centred on two public endeavours: the DefenceFund (Keren HaMagen) designed to help fund acquisition of weapons and theFortification of the Frontier (Bitzur Hasfar), a framework that sent volunteersto work on fortifications and assist frontier settlements. These twoendeavours were an expression of David Ben-Gurion’s pioneering outlookthat sought to blend voluntary components and the use of the central powersof the state, parallel to putting Israeli society on the necessary footing in theyear that preceded the Sinai war.

Keywords: 1956 war; Sinai campaign; Defence Fund; fortifications; Israelifrontier; pioneering; mobilization; voluntary movement

The relationship between state and society in Israel during the years spanning the

end of the 1948 war and the outbreak of the 1956 war went beyond organizational

matters and the strengthening of the centrality of the state. It touched the very

image and values of the new Israeli society taking shape. The transition from a

Jewish community operating within a voluntary framework to a state with power

to enforce its sovereignty and authority, was manifested towards one of the most

central components of Zionist ideology: pioneering endeavour.

Against the backdrop of erosion of the collective ethos, and in the midst of

endeavours to absorb mass immigration, establish sovereignty and reconstruct

society after the 1948 War, there was an attempt by the Israeli government

under the leadership of David Ben-Gurion to give new hues to the Zionist

pioneering ideal.

This approach, labelled ‘Statist Pioneering’ (chalutziut mamlachtit),1 sought

to combine the willingness within society to volunteer on behalf of national

endeavours with management and direction of this mobilization in the hands of

state institutions. The institutional efforts to organize a public and voluntary

movement using the machinery of political and state agencies was evidenced in

the first years of the State of Israel in a number of frameworks, such as the

ISSN 1353-7121 print/ISSN 1743-9086 online

q 2010 Taylor & Francis

DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2010.487732

http://www.informaworld.com

*Email: mnaor3@gmail.com

Israel Affairs

Vol. 16, No. 3, July 2010, 434–454

‘Pioneering Service for Israel’ (Hasherut Hachalutzi l’Israel), the settlement

movement ‘From the City to the Village’, and the assistance extended by Israeli

youth to new settlements founded by immigrants.2 At the same time, the largest

popular and public attempt to mobilize society on behalf of a pioneering

voluntary effort took place in the year prior to the outbreak of the 1956 war.

This article deals with the voluntary movement that began in October 1955

and focused on two national enterprises: the Defence Fund (Keren HaMagen) and

Fortification of the Frontier (Bitzur Hasfar). While the Defence Fund sought

to mobilize donations from the public to purchase arms for the Israeli Defence

Force (IDF) and to cover other security needs, the Fortification of the Frontier

was a movement that in the course of its mission sent volunteers to carry out

fortification work in kibbutzim and immigrant settlements.3 The mobilization

of Israeli society for these two enterprises constituted an attempt to forge a

voluntary movement that stressed pioneering values and patriotism during a

period of military tensions and escalating security concerns.4

During this period, Israel prepared itself not only from a military standpoint,

but also in terms of civil deployment that included putting the home front and the

economy on an emergency footing. The mobilization of society behind the

Defence Fund and the Fortification of the Frontier as part of efforts to revitalize

the pioneering spirit and to prepare society for a period of national emergency

were an expression of the nature and very essence of the ‘statist pioneering’ that

the government sought to establish in Israel at the beginning of the 1950s. Both

the conduct of the Defence Fund and organization of the Fortification of the

Frontier – which began as spontaneous voluntary acts and local initiatives –

gradually became an endeavour that rested on the use and the authority of the

state and its institutions.

The Defence Fund: between voluntarism and statism

In September 1955, the arms deal between Egypt and Czechoslovakia became

public. In addition to its military importance, the deal, which included among

other things acquisition of fighter aircraft and bombers by Egypt, also had

political significance. The supply of weaponry to Egypt not only threatened to

change the balance of power in the Arab–Israeli conflict; it also was a component

in the struggle for hegemony within the Arab world. In addition, it marked the

transformation of the Middle East into an arena of the Cold War and the struggle

between the West and the Soviet blocs.

Changes in the regional balance of power and growing military tensions along

the Egyptian–Israeli border were the focus of debates by decision-makers in

Israel as to the wisdom of initiating a war against Egypt as a pre-emptive

measure. Such a ‘preventive war’ and the linkage between Israeli policy and

escalation of the situation in military and security terms prior to the outbreak of

the Sinai war on 29 October 1956 has been dealt with extensively in the research

literature and is beyond the scope of this article.5

Israel Affairs 435

At the same time, the importance of this issue from the perspective of this

article rests on understanding the sense of an Egyptian threat that serves as a

backdrop to the events under study. Within the framework of the military and

diplomatic deployment that preceded October 1956, Israel sought to obtain arms

in the United States and Europe. As a result of the failure of efforts to procure

armaments from the United States, France supplied the weaponry designed to

re-establish an Israeli deterrent and enable Israel to reach a decisive outcome

in battle. While the Israeli leadership was still seeking arms sources, a public

endeavour to mobilize money to underwrite the purchase of arms was initiated.

The Israeli voluntary movement began in the wake of a speech by the prime

minister and minister of foreign affairs, Moshe Sharett in the Knesset on 18

October 1955.6 In his speech – delivered in a special plenum session of the Israeli

parliament – Sharett underscored the threat Israel faced in light of the Czech–

Egyptian arms deal. Sharett stressed Israel’s efforts to obtain defensiveweapons as

a step to prevent a change in themilitary balance and to restrain Egypt’s aggressive

tendencies. His message was two-fold and designed to meet two primary needs.

Beyond calling upon the international community, headed by the United States, to

provide Israel with the means to defend itself, the Israeli prime minister’s speech

was directed at two communities – the American Jewish community and the

citizenry of the State of Israel.World Jewry and Israel’s citizenrywere called upon

to unite behind an ongoing effort and general mobilization to finance arms

purchases.7

Sharett’s speech concluded a series of deliberations carried out by the

government of Israel beginning in early October 1955 dedicated to the proper

Israeli response to the Egyptian arms deal.8 The government’s deliberations (and

the special session of the Knesset in which Sharett delivered his speech) took place

during a period of political transition. Following Knesset elections in July 1956,

Ben-Gurion set about establishing a coalition government under his leadership. In

the meantime, Sharett continued to lead as prime minister of a transitional

government until the new government took office at the beginning of November.

In this incoming government, to be led by Ben-Gurion, Sharett was slated for the

foreign affairs portfolio (and in this capacity would dictate the responses of the

Israeli government to the arms crisis). The Defence Fund began to operate during

the short period of transition government under Sharett’s leadership.

The day after Sharret’s speech, a popular movement of citizens spontaneously

emerged, seeking to donate personal effects, valuable articles and money to buy

arms. In the days that followed, the wave of volunteerism continued with some

donors arriving at government offices, particularly the Ministries of Finance and

Defence, requesting that government clerks take their personal contributions.

Already in the course of the first week after the first donations began to appear, the

endeavour to collect money for arms was labelled the Defence Fund. The choice

of name sought to highlight the need to acquire arms which were perceived as

defensive in nature, and whose financing had to come from outside the regular

M. Naor436

state budget. Yet these gestures also expressed the importance of participation of

society as a whole in this voluntary movement.

The beginnings of this unorganized voluntary movement that developed

from the ‘grass roots’ and encompassed various sectors of Israeli society, was

described byMoshe Sharett in a radio speech on the Voice of Israel on 21 October

as a response arising from a state of national emergency and the desire to partake

in the overall national effort.9 Moreover, in Sharett’s estimation, the wave of

volunteerism also reflected a domestic psychological need to bolster public

spirits.10 Donor letters sent to the heads of government, and broad coverage in the

press demonstrate the deep sense of anxiety, isolation and besiegement that

intensified among the Israeli public after the Czech–Egyptian arms deal was

made public, as well as the senders’ patriotic feelings. Among the donors were

groups of workers from the Federation of Labour’s membership, craftsmen,

industrialists, clerks and government employees who in addition to donating

money outright, also contributed wages from a number of workdays. In addition,

there were locally organized drives among schoolchildren who collected money

in their classes, new immigrant residents in transit camps and kibbutz and moshav

members. Some cited specifically that their donation was in order to buy various

kinds of armaments. Voluntary donations were also made by families that chose

to forgo family celebrations and donated the costs to the Defence Fund. There

were children who donated their allowances and personal belongings of value.

One of the most stirring forms of participation came from bereaved parents of

sons or daughters fallen in battle, who donated the compensation they had

received from the Ministry of Defence and who sought to memorialize their loved

ones in this manner.11

Donations to the Defence Fund from abroad were a form of support on the part

of Jews in the Diaspora who sought to express their identification with Israel in its

hour of need. Abroad, contributions to the Defence Fund were collected in Jewish

schools, synagogues, Jewish community centres as well as among Jewish students

and Yeshivas.12 The issues of identification, solidarity, affiliation and identity and

the allegiance quandary vis-a-vis the Jewish state were also key factors in the

response of the Israeli Arab minority. As a community under military

government, Muslim donors, including village heads, chose to inform regional

military governors regarding the scope of their contributions to the Defence

Fund. The military governors, in turn, passed on a list of Arab contributors to

military government headquarters.13 On one hand, some voices amongst the

Arab minority in Israel there denounced the contributions to the Defence Fund,

and on the other hand, the contribution was described as a civic duty.14 Against

the backdrop of national and ethnic identity issues that the Defence Fund raised,

the call of the heads of the Druze community who urged its members to

demonstrate their allegiance to the State of Israel by donating to the Defence Fund

was supportive.15

These patterns of positive popular and voluntary consent were typical of the

beginnings of the Defence Fund and some continued throughout the Fund’s

Israel Affairs 437

operation, in the months that followed. At the same time, in the third week after

the first donations appeared spontaneously, the Defence Fund already began to

take the shape of an organized and centrally directed appeal in the hands of state

institutions.

The question of how funds collected by the Defence Fund should be handled

led to the establishment of special government machinery. The Central Bank

of Israel opened a special account to which contributions deposited in bank

branches throughout the country would be funnelled. In the course of the month

of October, a special bureau was established at the Ministry of Defence that

coordinated the administration of contributions, and the Ministry of Finance

appointed a coordinator and national supervisor to oversee the organization and

operation of the Defence Fund.16

But the primary change in the organization of the volunteering movement

took shape in November 1955 when a public committee for management of the

Defence Fund was established. The government, headed by the prime minister,

Moshe Sharett, the minister of finance, Levi Eshkol, and the director-general of

the Ministry of Defence Shimon Peres, deliberated various changes that would

organize donations on a more effective footing and widen the circle of donors –

structural change that would direct and promote the volunteering movement

while maintaining its voluntary character. To do so, the government decided to

establish a public committee that would administer the Defence Fund, stressing

that the enterprise was not a state institution. Yet, parallel to this, not only was

the government the body that decided on establishing a public committee; the

government also defined the committee’s objectives and appointed its

members.17

The Defence Fund’s public committee was headed by two former chiefs-of-

staff of the Israel Defence Forces – Yaakov Dori and Yigal Yadin. By appointing

key figures in the defence realm rather than the fiscal realm, the government

sought to underscore that the Defence Fund was a national enterprise and an

endeavour of utmost importance from a public and security standpoint. Alongside

the two generals, representatives of the public were appointed whose

choice reflected the involvement of key social organizations in the volunteering

movement, and a governing board was established to coordinate the Fund’s

operation.18 As part of its volunteer character, the public committee chose to

base its operational machinery on volunteers and to refrain from employing

salaried personnel.

The public committee divided its operations into the private and public

sectors. To do so, local committees were established in the various cities and the

mayors of the large cities were requested to lend their support in making the

enterprise a popular voluntary endeavour. In addition, economic committees

were established by economic sectors – such as the agricultural sector, the

industrial sector, the public sector and professionals with private practices

(e.g. lawyers, physicians, accountants, etc.).19 The Defence Fund’s public

committee needed the assistance of local workers’ committees as well as the

M. Naor438

participation and assistance of economic organizations in Israel’s economy. The

Manufacturers’ Association assumed a primary role and called for a mobilization

of contributions from economic branches according to sector quotas. Likewise,

involving the Histadrut (the General Federation of Labour) proved essential.

The operational structure of the Defence Fund was therefore based on a

differentiation between mobilization of funds based on popular voluntarism and

mobilization of contributions from the salaried and the private sectors. This

system had been employed in the past as part of the Israeli mobilization during

the 1948 war. At that time, public participation in underwriting the war effort had

included both popular appeals and a national defence ‘war bond’. In 1948, the

mobilization of capital to fund the war was influenced by the course of the war

itself and the transition from the Jewish community voluntary frameworks to state

machinery that was just being established. In contrast, the Defence Fund was

carried under a sense that these were, indeed, trying times of national emergency

and the country was threatened militarily, but this was not a wartime endeavour

as in 1948. The main differences between the two voluntary movements were the

product of changes in the institutional and social structure that took place in Israel

in the early 1950s.

The administration of the Defence Fund illustrated the increase in strength of

state institutions and their central role as part of Ben-Gurion’s statist posture.

The attempt to integrate pioneering and voluntary trends and the use of certain

components of legislative power and authority of government was expressed in

the way the Defence Fund’s public committee operated, and relationships

between the committee and the Israeli government. While the decision to

establish the public committee was the doing of Moshe Sharett’s administration,

the committee’s actual operations were carried out under the leadership of Ben-

Gurion’s premiership. This change was apparent in the workings of the public

committee and the way the voluntary movement developed.

The first target of the Defence Fund’s public committee was to collect 25

million Israeli pounds by the end of 1955.20 Yet in fact, the operations of the

public committee continued until May 1956, and the total sum mobilized only

amounted to 18.15 million Israeli pounds.21 Beyond organizational difficulties

associated with the voluntary nature of the movement’s machinery, the failure to

reach the 25 million pound target lies primarily with the relationship between the

voluntary components of the Fund and the Fund’s administration as an institution

identified as an arm of the state. This linkage was reflected in an announcement

by David Ben-Gurion in the course of a 1 January 1956 government meeting, that

the Defence Fund’s target should be increased from 25 million to 50 million.22

David Ben-Gurion’s position arose from a combination of arms acquisition

needs and defence budget limitations, together with the desire to forge a

volunteering ‘regime’ as an ongoing phenomenonwithin Israeli society. In addition,

the objective was to enhance mobilization of donations across world Jewry. Ben-

Gurion surmised that the existence of an Israeli movement of volunteerism prepared

to demonstrate a spirit of sacrifice under a state of emergency and cognizance that

Israel Affairs 439

the country faced a clear and present military danger would also impact on the

willingness of the Jewish Diaspora to contribute.23 As in 1948, Golda Meir, the

labour minister, was sent on a mission to collect donations from American Jewry.

The objective of her mission was to increase mobilization of funding by the United

Jewish Appeal from US$25 million to US$100 million. Her campaign, however,

ended in failure.24 Here as well, like the Defence Fund, raising the target figure and

increasing the amount the state expected to receive had a dampening effect on the

willingness of the public to contribute.

In contrast to David Ben-Gurion’s position, the heads of the Defence Fund

public committee held that the 50 million Israeli pound goal was beyond the

donating power of the public.25 Moreover, Yadin and Dori were of the opinion

that changing the Fund’s goal was liable to spread consternation and confusion

among the public and badly undermine readiness to volunteer, even to the point

of disrupting the operations of the Defence Fund, which up to that point had

succeeded in absorbing some 8 million Israeli pounds in cash from the public.26

The Defence Fund public committee’s stance on the issue was adopted by the

government of Israel; in a 15 January 1956 meeting of the government it was

decided that the Defence Fund’s public committee would continue to operate

according to the original plan to collect 25 million pounds by March of that year.

In addition, the government decided that with the conclusion of the Defence Fund

committee’s work, the public would be levied with a special tax to cover the cost

of arms acquisition.27

The decision to levy a tax marked the decline of the voluntary element in the

workings of the Defence Fund. The government’s recognition that a voluntary

movement did not have the force to mobilize the sums needed for budgeting

defence acquisitions led to a turning point in policy. From the outset of the

Defence Fund’s operations, it had been the Ministry of Finance’s position that it

was preferable to levy taxes or legislate a defence bond to underwrite defence

acquisitions. The decision to employ the state’s legislative powers was delayed

by the desire to maintain a voluntary element in this endeavour and to fully

realize it from an ideological standpoint. The government’s decision in favour of

levying contributions to the Defence Fund by law transformed the voluntary

nature of civilian participation and impacted on the Fund’s operations.

In the course of endeavours to meet the 25 million pound goal, the public

committee focused its efforts on the private sector. At the same time, a publicity

campaign was launched to encourage volunteerism. Notices in newspapers called

upon the public to increase its contributions, special posters and postcards were

printed, proceeds of plays and films were devoted to the Fund, weaponry was put

on display in cities. Voice of Israel radio conducted a demonstration of support by

Israeli performing artists and processions including local youth, who marched

through the streets of the big cities to drum up support. In December 1955

Chanukah celebrations were linked to volunteering on behalf of the Defence

Fund with tens of mass rallies attended by public figures, government ministers

and members of the Knesset.28 The publicity campaign reached its height in

M. Naor440

February 1956 when a public convention was held with the prime minister, the

chief-of-staff Moshe Dayan and the heads of the Defence Fund in attendance.

At this gathering, honorary certificates were presented to the first donors to the

Defence Fund. This was yet another attempt to underscore the popular, civic and

national elements of the volunteering movement.

Publicity efforts also included steps to prevent the appearance of what the

Defence Fund’s public committee perceived as ‘dodging one’s civic duty’. Since

the public committee lacked the authority to enforce participation or impose

sanctions, it applied pressure on non-participants, publicly taking the dodgers to

task. In March 1956, in an exceptional step, the names of seven citizens whom the

defence committee management claimed had dodged contributing to the nation

were published in the newspapers.29 It should be kept in mind that the operations

of the Defence Fund also served as a platform for political criticism of the

government. The Israeli Communist Party expressed its opposition to the Defence

Fund, branding it an endeavour whose objective was the acquirement of western

arms to strengthen relations between Israel and the United States.

Against the backdrop of the consensus that this voluntary movement sought

to forge within Israeli society, Communist criticism sparked scathing political

reactions, including branding the opponents as traitors. This was the case, for

example, in a meeting of the Knesset and another of the Tel Aviv Municipality’s

governing council dedicated to the issue of the Defence Fund, and also at a

meeting of the Federation of Labour’s executive that took place on 10 November

1955; at these meetings, the Communist Party representative was barred from

speaking.30

Despite the publicity campaign, in the end the Defence Fund did not meet its

goals. With April approaching, the target sum was still far from reach, and when

it became evident that bringing the Defence Fund bill before the Knesset had also

been held up, the government asked the public committee to extend its operation

by an additional month. Up until that point the public committee had been

wrestling with a negative public mood driven by the assumption that since every

citizen would soon be saddled with a compulsory contribution to the Defence

Fund, one would be wise not to contribute voluntarily and to wait for the law to be

passed. The relationship between the community or citizenry and the state that

this question and the public mood reflected was, fundamentally, an expression of

the tension that had emerged between the voluntary element and the legislative

element, between statism and pioneering.

Thus the government and the public committee took pains to reassure the

public that those who had contributed to the Defence Fund would be credited and

their donation would be balanced against whatever tax was levied by law.

Moreover, the objective of the law was, among other things, to send a message to

those who chose not to participate – an indication that those who had not

participated in this effort would be forced by law to pay. The government hoped

to mobilize through the power of the law 50 million Israeli pounds, in addition to

the donations achieved by the Defence Fund.31

Israel Affairs 441

On 23 May 1956, the Knesset passed the ‘Yahav’ Defence Law (‘Trust in

Defence’). While the new levy was collected from employees by deduction from

their salaries – like income tax, the amount due from the independently

employed was linked to their income. The law was worded in a manner that

would ensure that the principle would be upheld, that all contributions to the

Defence Fund prior to passage of the Law would be recognized and offset against

the amount owed under the Defence Law. Implementation of the law was placed

in the hands of a public council appointed by the president of the State of Israel in

June 1956, designed to serve as an advisor to the government. The primary

function of the council’s members was to establish an appeals committee that

would review requests for credits from citizens who had contributed to the

Defence Fund. The importance of the council lay in it serving as a link between

the Defence Fund and the Defence Law. The council was forced to grapple with

many bureaucratic difficulties that accompanied proving the amounts contributed

to the Defence Fund by each citizen. For this purpose affidavit statement

forms were sent to thousands of independently employed persons and salaried

personnel where employers were requested to note the amount contributed by

each employee. This bureaucratic morass, which included countless submissions

to the appeals committee, characterized the workings of the legislation in the first

months after its passage into law, and the transition from a voluntary operation

under the Defence Fund public committee administration to a compulsory

operation of state machinery under the ‘Yahav’ Defence Law.32

On 9 May 1956, in the final stages of passage of the ‘Yahav’ Defence bill into

law, a final meeting of the Defence Fund public committee was held. At this

festive gathering marking the end of six months of operation during which 80%

of the target sum of 25 million Israeli pounds was donated by the public, a

message from the minister of finance was read out. In summing up the Defence

Fund’s endeavours, after citing the importance of mobilizing funding per se, Levi

Eshkol noted that this endeavour ‘began in volunteerism and private–public-

popular devotion and was carried on through statist organizational modes’.33 The

same modus operandi was reflected in the character and organization of the

Fortification of the Frontier endeavour that constituted a complementary element

to the operations of the Defence Fund within the volunteering movement that

preceded the outbreak of the 1956 Sinai war.

A pioneering front: Fortification of the Frontier

In a session of the Knesset held on 2 November 1955, David Ben-Gurion

presented the new coalition government he headed and the government’s plans

for the coming four years.34 Ben-Gurion held that carrying out the national

missions that the country faced – particularly the absorption of mass immigration

and economic and social integration of the immigrants into Israeli society –

could be accomplished provided that it was carried out not only through the

auspices of the coercive machinery of state, legislation and budgets, but that

M. Naor442

this would be paralleled by a concerted cooperative effort by state institutions

and society together. One of the prime objectives of the government, an

administration defined by Ben-Gurion as a ‘pioneering government’, was to

utilize the spirit of popular volunteerism that began to be manifested with the

operations of the Defence Fund, and channel this spirit towards strengthening

border settlements.

The frontier settlements, both moshav and kibbutz communities that were

established along Israel’s borders – particularly in the Western Negev opposite

the Gaza Strip and along the border between Israel and Egypt – were the focus of

military operations in the years preceding the outbreak of the Sinai war. Against

the backdrop of exchange of fire along the borders, infiltration of Israeli territory

by Palestinian fedayun and Israeli retaliatory raids against Egyptian, Jordanian

and Syrian targets, and considering that war with Egypt was anticipated,

decision-makers in Israel were increasingly concerned whether settlements on

the frontier had the ability to persevere under pressure – both militarily and as

communities.35 Both Ben-Gurion and the chief-of-staff, Moshe Dayan, feared

that in the event of an all-out Egyptian attack, border settlements might be

abandoned by their inhabitants – communities that for the most part were settled

by new Jewish immigrants.36 This apprehension was two-pronged, both due to

the defence strategy of Israel at the time which assigned such frontier settlements

a military role in regional defence deployment with settlements expected to stand

fast and assist in halting any Egyptian advance as had been the case in 1948, and

due to the negative impact on morale and on the resoluteness of Israel society in

general in wartime, should such settlements collapse.37

Due to these apprehensions and David Ben-Gurion’s pioneering perceptions

of civic society, the Israeli government called upon the public to send volunteers

to assist new immigrants in border settlements. In the government meeting of

4 December 1955, Ben-Gurion explained: ‘If this immigration will not be

accompanied by pioneering youth, by doctors, teachers and nurses, they will not

stand the test. These people on their own are not trained to endure as the

settlements endured in 1948’.38

The recruitment of young volunteers who chose to go to immigrant

settlements as instructors had taken place prior to this. In a series of gatherings

carried out in 1954, Ben-Gurion had called upon youth movement members, high

school students and youth from veteran collectivist agricultural communities to

mobilize for this pioneering mission.39 Now Ben-Gurion sought to expand this

model and turn such missions into a mass movement. Youth in the cities and

among veteran rural communities were called upon to go out to the new

immigrant settlements as both instructors and as settlers, not only in order to

strengthen frontier settlements from a security standpoint, but also from a ‘moral’

standpoint.

Assistance to new immigrant settlements driven by a pioneering spirit and

readiness to volunteer was one of the components in Ben-Gurion’s programme to

bolster frontier communities. In this framework, Ben-Gurion even sought to

Israel Affairs 443

investigate the feasibility of moving industrial plants and public institutions

to frontier areas and stressed the need to establish new settlements in the Negev.

His primary emphasis was on improving the standard of living in the Negev and

closing the social and economic gap between the centre and the periphery in the

south and between veterans and new immigrants.40 In his public speeches and in

deliberations in the government and in the Knesset, Ben-Gurion repeatedly noted

the importance of closing social gaps and forging amore egalitarian and integrated

Israeli society. The social gap was presented as a cultural, social and economic

gulf that separated new immigrants and veteran Israeli society, between the

middle class and labourers in cities in the centre, and new immigrants in frontier

settlements. In Ben-Gurion’s eyes the social cleavages were both a moral and a

political risk.41 In addressing this gap, Ben-Gurion used the terms ‘Veteran

Yishuv’ to describe the Jewish society in Israel and ‘New Yishuv’ to define the

new Jewish immigrants.42

Ben-Gurion’s call to mobilize society for pioneering missions awakened

political and public debate regarding vehicles for organizing the dispatch of

volunteers to help border settlements; this included whether or not the country

needed to be put on an emergency footing. Debate focused on the character of

such a volunteering movement. There were those in the Israeli political system

who demanded the establishment of an ‘emergency regime’ founded on the

authority of the state and its legal system in order to enforce the sharing of the

security burden by all sectors of society.43 Other proposals for organizing a

volunteering movement included mobilizing veterans of the ‘Haganah’ and

sending them to assist border settlements; mobilizing Jewish volunteers among

communities in the world for a year of service in Israel; moving up matriculation

examinations by six months in order to free high school students to work on

fortifications during school vacations; and adding a year of national service to

regular conscript service in the IDF.44

Despite the comparisons that Ben-Gurion repeatedly made between the

current Egyptian threat and the threat that existed in 1948, he opposed a

declaration of a state of emergency. He made a clear distinction between an

‘emergency regime’ driven by legal steps and using emergency ordinances to

build a conceptual-ideological volunteering ‘regime’. Loyal to a pioneering

ethos, Ben-Gurion preferred that reaching out to border settlements – which he

labelled ‘spiritual reinforcement’ – would emerge from a personal sense of

mission and a popular and voluntary pioneering spirit, parallel to state direction

and guidance, not by force of law.45

The demand that a popular volunteer ‘regime’ be established included the

call to promote civic preparedness for approaching war. Egyptian armaments

included fighter aircraft and bombers that sparked questions regarding whether

the Israeli home front was prepared in the event of war. Ben-Gurion’s

apprehensions that Egyptian air raids would inflict damage on the Israeli

home front were apparent when he spoke of the capabilities demonstrated by

Israeli society in the 1948 war as a model, stressing how that war was a modern

M. Naor444

‘total war’ in which no distinction was made between the military front and the

home front. This was the departure point for Ben-Gurion assigning such

importance to citizens volunteering for service in civil defence in the large cities,

and particularly in Tel Aviv which he perceived would be the prime target of any

Egyptian air raid and was, therefore, given preference in civil self-defence

preparedness.46 Civil defence for the coming war was coordinated by an inter-

ministerial committee headed by the minister of interior operating together with

the army and local municipalities. In the framework of these preparations, plans

for the building of shelters and the evacuation of casualties were made, and in the

large cities air raid drills were held.47

The ‘volunteering regime’ was to include not only preparations for a civil

defence network against aerial attack, but also preparation of the economy for a

state of emergency and assurance that essential civil services would continue to

function in wartime to supply food and healthcare. With this objective in mind,

the government established a committee to plan an economic deployment during

a state of emergency and a second committee to plan civil services during a state

of emergency.

Deliberations on preparations for a state of emergency were also discussed at

the party level. In January 1956, a special committee inside Mapai published

a programmewith the objective to prepare the country forwar, and towork towards

narrowing the social and economic gap between frontier settlements and the rest of

the country. TheMapai programme included the suggestion that a national defence

council be set up as an advisory body to the prime minister to assist, among other

things, in organizing civil defence, lowering the standards of living, levying taxes,

banning strikes in essential branches of the economy and restricting travel abroad.

Imposing a moratorium on the import of luxury items and mobilizing personnel to

assist frontier settlements. The Mapai-appointed committee recommended using

state of emergency regulations tomobilize doctors, kindergarten teachers, regional

commanders, teachers and nurses between the ages of 35 and 45 for a 12month

period, to be dispatched in teams of 10 personnel to assist new immigrant

settlements.48

In this milieu, dominated by calls for popular volunteerism and for

establishing a ‘regime’ of personnel on-call for pioneering endeavours, the

Fortification of the Frontier movement began. As was the case with the Defence

Fund, here also responses to the government’s call to strengthen frontier

settlements began as local initiatives. It was the Jerusalem Workers’ Council –

which had been one of the most active local worker’s committees organizing

donations to the Defence Fund – that first began organizing the dispatch of

volunteers to aid border settlements.49

On 8 January 1956 the first group of volunteers from the Jerusalem Workers’

Council, headed by the council secretary and members of the secretariat, went to

help kibbutzim in the Negev. The primary contribution of the volunteers was

manifested in building fortifications including shelters, fortified positions,

communications trenches and barbed wire fences, and in partaking in guard duty

Israel Affairs 445

and general work in the kibbutzim. The same month, other workers’ councils

joined the initiative – with members going out in one-week work details to

frontier settlements in the Upper Galilee, the Jordan Valley, the Negev and the

Jerusalem area. The transformation of these local initiatives into an organized

voluntary movement which became known as Fortification of the Frontier (Bitzur

HaSfrar) was made possible by the intervention of the Histadrut’s executive.

On 22 January 1956, the coordinating committee of the Histadrut decided to

assist in organizing a voluntary endeavour. The Histadrut coordinated requests

frommembers of theFederation ofLabour to volunteer to assist border settlements,

a mission coordinated with the workers’ committees.50 On 21 February, another

stage of organization of this endeavour emerged following a gathering of workers’

committee secretaries held at the central headquarters of the committees, attended

by the chief-of-staff Dayan and Prime Minister Ben-Gurion; the two called upon

the participants to mobilize a million workdays to assist frontier settlements.51

According to a decision of the Federation’s coordinating committee, at the

beginning ofMarch 1956 AvrahamHaft – who was also a member of the Defence

Fund public committee – was appointed to head a committee that coordinated

processing the dispatch of workers to work on fortifications.52

At the beginning of March 1956, fortification began to take an institutional

form as a movement under the label Fortification of the Frontier. The primary

factor of institutionalization was the coordination and collaboration that was

established among the General Federation of Labour, state ministries –

particularly the Ministries of Defence and Labour, and the Israel Defence Forces.

It was primarily the IDF, under the leadership of Dayan, which intensified its

involvement in the voluntary movement. The border settlements constituted an

element in the deployment of regional defence, both in the framework of ongoing

security missions to prevent the infiltration of fedayun and Egyptian shelling, and

in the event of war. At the beginning of March Dayan, the secretary-general of the

Ministry of Defence, Shimon Peres, and the secretary of the Histadrut, Mordechai

Namir, agreed that they would coordinate activities, including the organization of

volunteers being sent to carry out fortifications, and find ways to underwrite the

cost of fortifications, including use of monies from the Defence Fund.53

In March 1956 under series of orders for ‘Operation Wall’, the IDF began

formulating its policy vis-a-vis the fortifications.54 Frontier settlements were

divided by categories according to their level of military significance and stages

of implementation. The first stage of military plans included the fortification of

33 settlements in border areas, including the Jerusalem corridor, the Upper

Galilee and the Negev. While the federation of labour provided the volunteers,

the army was responsible for setting out working plans, supplying equipment and

providing professional guidance to volunteers.55 Besides engineering assistance

and supervision provided by the IDF engineering corps, the IDF also sent

conscripts to work on fortifications in new immigrant moshavim. Among those

partaking in this work were members of the police force, paramilitary high school

youth brigades (‘Gadna’), and day labourers sent by the Ministry of Labour.56

M. Naor446

By the time ‘Operation Wall’ was concluded in July 1956,57 150,000 workdays

had been contributed by volunteer citizens; 30,000 workdays had been

contributed by the IDF; and day labourers had provided another 160,000

workdays with pay.58

In the course of ‘OperationWall’ the IDF also conducted a publicity campaign

to encourage volunteerism, explaining the significance of the operation, stressing

the importance of bolstering the steadfastness of frontier settlements and the

responsibility of the state for the security of new immigrants.59 One of the central

figures championing participation in the effort was the chief-of-staff himself,

Moshe Dayan. In a meeting with the heads of the youth movements, Dayan called

upon their members to go out to work on fortifications during the Passover

vacation.60 Similar to Ben-Gurion, and even prior to ‘Operation Wall’, on 29

January 1956, Dayan met with leading Israeli writers including Natan Alterman,

Aharon Meged, Chanoch Bartov and Shlomo Nitzan to discuss, among other

things, the necessity of establishing a state of emergency ‘regime’ and the

fortification of the settlements of new immigrants.61

The messages that the army sought to transmit through its participation in the

Fortification of the Frontier endeavour was expressed on 8 March 1956 when

senior officers on the IDF’s general staff, including chief training officer Yitzhak

Rabin, chief intelligence officer Yehoshafat Harkabi, the chief-of-staff Moshe

Dayan and prime minister and minister of defence, David Ben-Gurion, in a

symbolic act went out to work for a day on fortifications at moshav Mivtachim,

near the Gaza Strip.62 Despite the involvement of the IDF, it was the volunteering

movement orchestrated by the Histadrut that gave the Fortification of the Frontier

endeavour its ideological significance and social character.

Prior to commencement of work on the Fortification of the Frontier, various

motions were raised for discussion in Histadrut institutions, geared to assist

border settlements – such as setting up, together with the government and the

Jewish Agency, a fund for fortifying settlements and establishing shelters.

Besides the Defence Fund, the Histadrut also sought to promote the movement

‘From the City to the Village’ – a framework that encouraged hundreds of

families in the cities to settle in moshavim and kibbutzim.63 But the primary

emphasis was given to Fortification of the Frontier. The Histadrut called on its

membership to mobilize for a week of work on frontier settlements. Workers’

committees and national unions were called upon to organize and coordinate

volunteers going out to carry out fortification work, so volunteers could be

divided among the various settlements. Each workers’ council was instructed to

set a quota of volunteers and to make arrangements for transportation, as well as

food, work tools and so forth during their sojourn. In addition, those workers who

could not go out to build fortifications were called upon to contribute days of

leave.64

The Histadrut’s involvement in the Defence Fund and the Fortification of the

Frontier endeavour was part of the institution’s effort to find new value-oriented

and national content in the transition from a voluntary community to a sovereign

Israel Affairs 447

state. Due to the change in the Histadrut’s status, and the feeling among its

leaders that with the establishment of the state their organization had become less

ideologically fuelled and too interest-driven and that the members had become

less altruistic and mission-oriented and too career-oriented, the Histadrut sought

to rejuvenate its ideological and collectivist compass.65

The Fortification of the Frontier endeavour, like the Defence Fund, was

perceived as an endeavour that could revitalize the sense of a social and national

mission within the Histadrut, enabling it to stand at the centre of a mass movement

dedicated to pioneering, settlement and security. Thiswas expressed in its decision

to combine suitable legislation and the volunteering spirit to establish a security

‘regime’ that would transform life patterns in the country, including ensuring

equal sharing of burdens, establishing a fair standard of living for workers, a

change in the geographic and occupational structure of the population and the

creation of a public milieu needed by the state and the federation that would put the

country on an emergency footing.66

The great importance Histadrut assigned to the volunteering movement was

expressed in the significance and ‘ideological interpretation’ that it gave the

social interaction forged between volunteers and frontier residents during work

on the fortifications. On 1 May 1956, the Histadrut marked May Day with a mass

demonstration – sending thousands of volunteers to work on the fortification of

frontier settlements. The organization of the event was carried out under the

shadow of Egyptian shelling of settlements along the border that took place

during April 1956, and the murder of Ro’ei Rotberg, civil defence coordinator in

kibbutz Nachal Oz, later that month. Workers’ committees, in collaboration with

the IDF, arranged for public institutions and federation of labour enterprises to go

out for a day of work in settlements in their local areas. In Tel Aviv, tens of

thousands volunteered to work on fortifications. In Jerusalem 4500 volunteers did

the same at 19 settlements in the area, ending the workday with a parade through

the streets of Jerusalem, together with members of the youth movements.67

The departure of thousands of volunteers for work on the fortification, most

for a period of a week, or a weekday as was the case on May Day, was presented

by the organizers of the campaign and the volunteers as a meeting between

the urban labourer and the farmer, between the ‘veteran Yishuv’ and the new

immigrants, and between the home front and the battle front. It was purported to

be a vehicle to become acquainted with pioneering life in villages, carried out

in the shadow of shelling and an ever-present security threat. The essence and

symbolic significance of this interchange, which went beyond mere assistance

in ongoing farm labour, guard duty and the construction of fortifications, is

illustrated in the testimonies of volunteers who came and the members of frontier

settlements who received them.

Among members of the kibbutzim the importance of the encounter with the

volunteers was perceived as a manifestation of proletarian solidarity, part of

strengthening solidarity and a renewal of the covenant between the toiling classes

in the city and collective settlements on the land. The death of Haim Miller, a

M. Naor448

volunteer killed when a firearm went off accidentally during his volunteer service

in kibbutz Carmia, was interpreted as testimony to the blood pact between

labouring members of the Histadrut in the city and pioneers on the frontier.68 In

addition, there was emphasis on the volunteering endeavour being a source of

moral support, a shared fate, providing support for those on the frontier while

signalling that they were not alone in the battle along Israel’s borders. In letters of

thanks that were sent by the secretariats of kibbutzim in the Negev to Histadrut

workers’ councils, one finds an expression of hope that the bond forged between

labourers in the city and the collective settlements on the land would not only

contribute to consolidation of Israeli society, but that this bond would continue

after the volunteer campaign ended.69

The Histadrut also sought to underscore the impact of first-hand encounters

with life on the frontier on the volunteers as they expressed it subsequently. They

were filled with passages describing the experience in terms of exposure to a

new unfamiliar reality – both from a geographic and social standpoint, with

impressions of the fields and new settlements established after the 1948 war and

settled by new immigrants.70 Another key aspect that the Histadrut sought to

underscore was the idea that the experience of going out to work on fortifications

and encounters with the settlers – and particularly the new immigrants among

them – ultimately nourished national feelings and pioneering values among the

volunteers themselves. The experience also placed the problems that volunteers

grappled with on a daily basis in their own lives in a new perspective, when

compared to the physical difficulties and security challenges they had encountered

during their period of service on the frontier. Thus this endeavour was viewed as

an opportunity to experience unknown facets of Israeli society and to champion

the vision of a national melting pot. Like service in the IDF, work on fortifications

was viewed as an experience in integrating immigrants with veterans.71

Particularly prominent were the impressions of members of the Teachers’

Federation. The Teachers’ Federation secretariat decided to extend the Passover

holiday by another week, then extend the school year by a week so that four cycles

of teachers could go out to work on fortifications in various parts of the country.72

To justify this decision, the secretariat explained that this move had been taken not

only in recognition of the importance of the fortification endeavour itself, but also

from a ‘spiritual perspective’ – not just a matter of physical preparedness; it

emanated from recognition that the teaching community as educators of the next

generation had to set an example by volunteering themselves.73 Descriptions

written by teachers and published in Hed Hachinuch, the house organ of

the Teachers’ Federation, reveal that in the eyes of the teachers themselves their

volunteer experience was perceived as an educational experience and a unique

form of in-service training, as a chapter in learning ‘the lay of the land’

(Yidiat Haaratz) and an introduction to new geographic and human landscapes,

including understanding the problems of frontier settlements and a first-hand

encounter with kibbutz life – experiences that the teachers hoped to share with

and instil in their students.74

Israel Affairs 449

To enhance the encounter with members of the moshavim and kibbutzim,

volunteer groups (and not just the teachers) were given guided tours of the

settlement and surrounding border areas, and lectures and cultural evenings were

organized for their benefit, attended by both volunteers and local residents.75

Thus, the Fortification of the Frontier movement was not solely a utilitarian

military endeavour to establish a line of fortifications comprised of ‘settlements

of armed and fortified combatants’, as the kibbutz haaretzi movement put it, but

also an endeavour that symbolized the completion of the preparatory stage –

readying citizenry for war.76

Conclusion

The Sinai campaign took place far from Israel’s population centres. Despite

David Ben-Gurion’s apprehensions that there would be air strikes against the

Israeli home front, preparations for a state of emergency, civil defence, and the

fortifications in frontier areas were not put to the test. In many ways, the Sinai

campaign marked the conclusion of a process of establishing Israeli sovereignty

and building the state that spanned the period between the 1948 war and the Sinai

campaign. This was also a period of military tension and escalation during which

Israel’s leadership sought to create a popular volunteering ‘regime’ that was part

and parcel of Ben-Gurion’s pioneering perspective and a component in the

preparation and organization of society for war.

At the close of the Sinai war, the Israeli government sought to extend the

‘Yahav’ Defence Law for an additional year. This decision, taken in the spring of

1957, was designed to underwrite the cost of the war, and did not involve any

voluntary component that had fuelled legislation of the law a year earlier. The

transition from popular volunteerism and statist pioneering came to a close even

before the outbreak of the Sinai campaign.

The Defence Fund and the Fortification of the Frontier endeavour began as

spontaneous local initiatives that emanated from the sense of growing security

concerns and in response to the call of Israeli leaders to the citizenry to volunteer

to meet national priorities. The volunteering movement began with Prime

Minister Moshe Sharett’s call for the public to show its sense of patriotic

responsibility and solidarity by contributing to the acquisition of arms. It

continued with the call on citizenry by Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion to

mobilize assistance to settlements on the frontier. In both endeavours there was

an emphasis on the defensive nature of the campaigns, as well as attempts to

amplify the spirit of volunteerism and pioneering tension as part of preparation of

the public for a state of emergency. Moreover, the prominent footprint of the

Histadrut in organising both volunteering movements was designed to provide

new national content and patriotic vitality to the Histadrut’s operations and to

present it as a major and vital national institution despite the transition from a

voluntary community to a state.

M. Naor450

Despite the emphasis on voluntarism, particularly in the initial local stages of

organization of both endeavours, and the ideological bent of their administration,

subsequently, in both instances, one observes the increased intervention of

the state in the institutionalization of the Defence Fund – beginning with

the appointment of the public government committee and later in legislation of the

‘Yahav’ Defence Law by the Knesset. All the more so, in the Fortification of

the Frontier, one encounters the involvement of the Israeli army and the Ministry

of Defence. Both played a major role in shaping its institutionalization. Thus,

both the Defence Fund and the Fortification of the Frontier were part of a

movement that reflected processes that led up to the outbreak of the Sinai war, and

typified the changes that took place in Israeli society and ideology in the first years

following statehood.

Notes on contributor

Moshe Naor teaches history in the Rothberg International School at the Hebrew Universityof Jerusalem.

Notes

1. On ‘statist pioneering’ see Henry Near, “Pioneers and Pioneering in the State ofIsrael: Semantic and Historical Developments, 1948–1956,” Iyunim Bitkumat Israel2 (1992): 116–49 [Hebrew]; Moshe Lissak, “Building Institutions from a Ben-Gurion Perspective,” in David Ben-Gurion as a Labour Leader, ed. Shlomo Avineri(Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 1988), 108–17 [Hebrew].

2. For more on attempts to encourage a pioneering movement in the 1950s, see PaulaKabalo, “Dialogues with Young People: David Ben-Gurion’s Youth Campaigns,1939–1954,” Israel Affairs 14, no. 2 (April 2008): 218–36; Zvi Zameret, “The Riseand Fall of the ‘Mobilized Zionism’,” Cathedra 67 (March 1993): 136–64 [Hebrew].

3. Israeli historiography has devoted very little attention to the Defence Fund and theFortification of the Frontier. Most mentions of the two projects are in the context ofdiscussion of Israeli security policy and deterioration of the military situation leadingup to the 1956 Sinai war. See for example: Mordechai Bar-On, Challenge andQuarrel: The Road to the Sinai – 1956 (Beer-Sheva: Ben-Gurion UniversityPublishers, 1991), 66–73 [Hebrew]. At the same time, one can find some research ofthe two projects that relates to discourse on the breakdown of values in Israeli societyduring these years, and claims in some circles that these two movements were, inessence, part of attempt to forge a ‘nation in uniform’. See Uri Ben-Eliezer, TheEmergence of Israeli Militarism, 1936–1956 (Tel Aviv, Dvir Publishers, 1995),304–8 [Hebrew]; Yona Hadari, Messiah Rides a Tank: Public Thought Between theSinai Campaign and the Yom Kippur War 1955–1975 (Hakibbutz HameuchadPublishers, 2002), 56–60 [Hebrew].

4. On the military escalation in this period see: Motti Golani, Israel in Search of a War:The Sinai Campaign, 1955–1956 (Brighton: Sussex Academic Press, 1998); BennyMorris, Israel’s Border Wars, 1949–1956: Arab Infiltration, Israeli Retaliation andthe Countdown to the Suez War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997); David Tal,Israel’s Day to Day Security Conception: Its Origin and Development 1949–1956(Sede-Boqer: Ben-Gurion University Press, 1998) [Hebrew].

5. On the research debate over Israeli policy and a ‘preventive war’, see for example:Mordechai Bar-On, “Small Wars, Big Wars: Security Debates during Israel’s First

Israel Affairs 451

Decade,” Israel Studies 5 (Fall 2000): 107–27; David Tal, “Ben-Gurion, Sharett andDayan: Confrontation Over the Issue of Preemptive War,” Cathedra 81 (1996):109–22 [Hebrew]; Motti Golani, “Did Ben-Gurion Oppose or Support Dayan? Israelon the Road to Preemptive War,” Cathedra 81 (1996): 123–32 [Hebrew].

6. Protocol of Knesset Session, 18 October 1955, Divrei Haknesset (Records of theIsraeli Knesset) 19, no. 4 (Jerusalem: Government Printing Office).

7. Moshe Sharett, A Personal Diary (Tel Aviv: Maariv, 1978), 1230 [Hebrew].8. Meeting of the Israeli government, 3, 9 and 16 October 1955,Government Protocols,

Israel State Archives (hereafter, ISA).9. Moshe Sharett, Radio broadcast to the Nation, 21 October 1955, ISA 43/5427/1.10. Sharett, Personal Diary, 1238.11. See for example: Donations by third graders in the HACHIYAL Elementary School

in Yad Eliyahu, to the President of the State of Israel Yitzhak Ben-Zvi, ISA105/85/12. “Donations to the Defence Fund,” Davar, October 24, 1955. For morecoverage of the Defence Fund in the Hebrew press, see Mordechai Berger, Arms forIsrael: The Defence Fund (Jerusalem: Israel Tax Museum, 1968), 19–20 [Hebrew].

12. See for example: From the Secretary of the President of the State of Israel, to theStudents of the Flatbush Yishiva in New York, 20 December 1955, ISA 130/2467/9.Report from the Israeli Consulate in Los Angeles, 27 December 1955, ISA130/2467/9.

13. From the Governor’s Assistant in Civil Matters on Behalf of the Military Governorfor the North, to Military Government Headquarters, Contributions to the DefenceFund, 10 November 1955, ISA 102/17118/28.

14. From the Secretary of Government Employees Association in Nazareth, to theAdvisor in Arab Affairs in the Prime Ministers Office, 26 October 1955, ISA102/ 17118/28. And also Ha’aretz, November 27, 1955.

15. “The Arabs of Israel and the Defence Fund,” Haboker, November 6, 1955.16. State Comptroller’s Bureau, 31 October 1955, ISA 59/12533/10.17. Government Meeting Protocol: 23 October, 30 October and 6 November 1955, ISA.18. State Comptroller’s Report on the Defence Fund, 25 December 1955, ISA

59/12533/10.19. Protocol of Meeting of the Federation Executive, 10 November 1955, Levon Labour

Archives.20. Protocol of the Meeting of the Defence Fund Public Committee, 8 November 1955,

ISA 59/12533/10.21. Defence Fund National Committee, Final Account of Operations, May 1956, Central

Zionist Archives, S 80/324.22. Protocol of the Meeting of the government, 1 January 1956, ISA.23. Protocol of the Meeting of the government, 15 January 1956, ISA. Protocol of the

Meeting of the government, 15 January 1956, ISA.24. Protocol of the Meeting of the government, 29 January 1956, ISA.25. Protocol of the Meeting of the National Committee of the Defence Fund, 5 January

1956, ISA 59/12533/10.26. From Yaakov Dori to Ben-Gurion, 13 January 1956, ISA 43/5427/2.27. Protocol of the Meeting of the Government, 15 January 1956, ISA.28. Protocol of the National Committee of the Defence Fund, 15 December 1955, ISA

59/12533/10.29. “The Names of Those Dodging Fulfilment of their Duties to the Defence Fund

Published,” Davar, March 11, 1956.30. Protocol of Meeting of the Defence Fund National Committee, 22 March 1956, ISA

59/12533/10; “Turmoil in Tel-Aviv Municipality’s governing Council,” Ha’aretz,October 27, 1955; Knesset Deliberations, 24 October 1956, Divrei Haknesset

M. Naor452

(Records of the Israeli Knesset) 19, no. 5; Protocol of the Meeting of the Federation

of Labour’s Executive, 10 November 1955, Lavon Labour Archive.31. Protocol of the Meeting of the government, 19 April 1956, ISA.32. From the “Report on the Operations of Yahav Defence Fund” published in Jerusalem

in May 1957 (No publisher cited. Source: The National Library, Jerusalem).33. Closing Meeting of the Defence Fund Public Committee, 9 May 1956, ISA

59/12533/10.34. Protocol of the Knesset Session, 2 November 1955, 19, no. 6, Divrei Haknesset

(Records of the Israeli Knesset).35. Chief-of-staff Moshe Dayan in a government meeting, 30 October 1955, ISA.36. Adriana Kamp, “‘Migration of Peoples’ or ‘a Great Inferno’: State Control and

Resistance on the Israeli Frontier,” inMizrahim in Israel: A Critical Observation into

Israel’s Ethnicity, ed. Hannan Hever, Yehouda Shenhav and Pnina Mutzafi-Haller

(Jerusalem: Van Leer Institute and Kibbutz Hameuchad Publishers, 2002), 36–67.37. See for example the words of Ben-Gurion in a government meeting, 1 January

1956, ISA.38. Protocol of the government Meeting, 4 December 1955, ISA.39. For additional reading on this topic, see Devora Hacohen, The Grain and the

Millstone: The Settlement of Immigrants in the Negev in the First Decade of the State

(Tel Aviv: Am Oved Publishers, 1998).40. Protocol of the government Meeting, 11 and 18 December 1955, ISA.41. Protocol of the government Meeting, 11 December 1955, ISA.42. See Ben-Gurion’s comments in the government Meeting, 11 December 1955 and

1 January 1956, ISA.43. Protocol of the Knesset Session, 2 January 1956, 19, no. 14, Divrei Haknesset

(Records of the Israeli Knesset).44. Protocol of the Government Meeting, 1 and 15 January 1956.45. Protocol of a Meeting of the Federation of Labour Executive, 5 January 1956, Lavon

Labour Archives.46. The 8th Convention of the Federation of Labour, 18–20 March 1956, Tel Aviv:

General Federation of Labour Publishers, Lavon Labour Archives.47. Protocol of the Government Meeting, 27 November 1955, 18 December 1955, ISA.48. Report of the Committee for Preparation of a Program for a State of Emergency,

12 January 1956, Labour Party Archives, 2-007-96-956.49. Special pamphlet for the Defence Fund issued by the Jerusalem Workers Fund,

18 October 1955, Lavon Labour Archives.50. Decision of the Coordinating Committee of the Federation of Labour, 22 January

1956, Lavon Labour Archives.51. Davar, February 22, 1956.52. Decision of the Coordinating Committee of the Federation of Labour, 1 March 1956,

Lavon Labour Archives.53. See Protocol of a meeting of the IDF General Staff, 26 February with Shimon Peres,

IDF Archives, and also Davar, March 6, 1956.54. Operation ‘Wall’ Order #1, 27 February 1956, IDF Archives 159/59/7.55. Protocol of a Meeting of the IDF General Staff, 26 February 1956, IDF Archives.56. From Uzi Narkis, Chief of Operations, Operation ‘Wall’ Orders #5, IDF Archive

159/59/7.57. On the summery of the Operation, see Meeting of the Federation of Labour

Executive, 19 July 1956, Lavon Labour Archives.58. Executive Summery of the Consummation Celebration of Operation ‘Wall’,

1 October 1956, IDF Archives 776/58/106.

Israel Affairs 453

59. Chief Education Officer, Operation ‘Wall’ – Educational Publicity, 8 March 1956,IDF Archives 776/58/9.

60. From the Youth and Pioneer Affairs Department of the Zionist Federation, to theLeadership of the Youth Movements, Fortification of Frontier Settlements, 2 March1956, IDF Archives 776/58/9.

61. Meeting of Dayan with Writers, 29 January 1956, IDF Archives, 778/58/106.62. “Fortification Operation of IDF Soldiers,” Davar, March 9, 1956.63. Decision of the Meeting of the Federation Central Committee, 27 November 1955,

Levon Labour Archives. Also: From the Central Committee “From the City to theVillage,” Memorandum to Members of the government, 19 December 1955, ISA43/3325/25.

64. Decision of the Meeting of the Federation Central Committee, 28 March 1956,Lavon Labour Archive.

65. 8th Convention of the Federation, 18–20 March 1956, Tel Aviv: General Federationof Labour Publisher, Lavon Labour Archives.

66. Ibid.67. From the Jerusalem Workers’ Council to the Fortification of the Frontier Public

Committee, 2 May 1956, Levon Labour Archives, IV 250-361-2306.68. “In Memory of Haim Miler,” Shoulder to Shoulder: The Volunteer Endeavour to

Fortify the Frontier (Merchavia: Kibbutz Haartzi Press, 1957).69. From the Secretariat of Mishmar Hanegev to the Jerusalem Workers’ Council,

11 January 1956, Levon Labour Archives, 250-36-2306.70. Moshe Alon, “In Summary of the Volunteer Campaign for Fortification of the

Frontier,” Levon Labour Archives, IV 2307-250-36-1.71. Tzila Paz, “With Those Mobilized to Assist the Frontier,” Hed Hachinuch: Weekly

of the Teachers’ Federation in Israel, Issue 16, April 5, 1956.72. Protocol of a Meeting of the Government, 18 March 1956, ISA.73. “To the Fortifications,” Hed Hachinuch, Issue 14–15, March 25, 1956; Baruch

Shabtai, “In Summary of the Campaign,” Hed Hachinuch, Issue 32–33, June 28,1956.

74. Shabtai, “In Summary of the Campaign.”75. Hed Hachinuch, Issue 20, April 26, 1956.76. “Decision of the 32nd Council of the Kibbutz Haartzi,”Hashavua Bkibbutz Haaretzi,

6th Year, Issue 30 (274), April 20, 1956.

M. Naor454