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110 16 Going Down to the Sea (1937)  - This essay provides a good example of the combination of boundless energy, extreme optimism, and dark trepidation that characterized David Ben-Gurion’s thinking about the Zionist project and the directions it may take in the future. Writing as an organized Palestinian nationalist rebellion was shaking the land, Ben-Gurion emphasizes as a positive development the construction of a new port in Tel Aviv, but he is concerned about the ease with which the nascent Jewish national home can be blockaded by sea and contemporary Jewry’s general estrangement from maritime pursuits. Thus in this document Zionist ideological yearnings to transform Jews into productive workers blend seamlessly with geo-political strategy. Ben-Gurion’s call was not heeded within his own Labor movement that at the time was all consumed with “conquering the land,” with acquiring more and more land and developing new Jewish settlements in Palestine. British policies were restricting the ability of Jews to purchase land. His archrivals, however, the right-wing Revisionists (see documents 23, 24), valued seafaring in keeping with their militaristic and commercial– capitalist ideology. Indeed, the timing of this essay suggests that it was written in order to co-opt or compete with the Revisionists, who in the mid-1930s were providing naval training for Zionist youth in Riga and Civitavecchia. Ben-Gurion’s vision of a vigorous Zionist merchant marine and commercial shipping fleet would be realized after 1948. ❖ Source: The Jewish Frontier (1945), 274–79. If I should be asked what event looms most important in the history of Palestinian colonization during 1936, I should unhesitatingly answer: neither the disturbances nor the riots, but the inauguration of the Tel Aviv port. I am convinced that a review of events, judged in historical perspective and unaffected by press ballyhoo , would reveal the real milestone in the past year to have been the creation of the Tel Aviv port. That innovation has indeed a permanent value, which promises to give a new turn to our political and resettlement program. For the Tel Aviv harbor is a starting point that leads up to the much larger maritime question. We should never forget the all-important fact that Palestinian Jews constitute only a picayune percentage of the Jewish people scattered throughout the world. And yet (barring one or two clusters of Jews in Persian and Iraq) we have no way of maintaining connections with the rest of the Jewish world, save by means of the sea. And in turn, no Jews—except those living in Syria, Mesopotamia, Turkey, or Persia—can possibly reach us other than by boat. Now inasmuch as communication with the Diaspora plays a vital part in our work, our sea predicament creates a grave danger. Observe what happened during the riots. We suffered not only from the Arab “strike”1 but from terrorist gangs, recruited not from local Arabs but in major part—if not numerically, at least from the point of view of their viciousness—made up of neighboring Syrians and Iraqi [sic] imported from bordering countries. These murderers had a direct land route for both entrance and egress. But Jews who arrive to create cannot come by land. They must take ship to enter Palestine. And yet, though sea communication is so all-important to us, Jews have no ships of their own. The many Jews in the Diaspora constitute an appreciable power and possess economic, financial, and in some cases even political influence. New York boasts an enormous Jewish population of two million, which can sometimes turn the tide in mayoral elections and which is no mean factor in determining the outcome of a hotly contested presidential campaign. It possesses financial power and controls many institutions and industries. But in one particular economic enterprise—that of the sea—Jews are complete outsiders. And yet the realm of the sea is neither an empty one nor an unpopulated desert of water. In its own way, indeed, it is an inhabited area, an immense economic resource, the main artery of communication for humanity. On this vast expanse we have staked out no holding. Jews conduct many businesses throughout the world. They own factories, banks, and corporations—but on the boundless sea teeming with transports, freighters, passenger vessels, fishing yawls, tourist and scout-boats, we cannot find even one Jewish launch. Of their own volition, Jews have excluded themselves from this potential economic activity. And this Going Down to the Sea (1937) 111...

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