Speech #850198787

The real labor for the impressive results of the last 10 years was done in the 70 years of Jewish colonization in Palestine. first under Turkish rule and then under the British mandate. It was during these years that the people cleared the land by digging stones out of the hills by hand and rooted out from the desert the prickly pear plants with primitive tools. Visitors to the communal farming settlements in the Galilee hills have been amazed to see how quickly the new immigrants to Israelstudents. merchants. and former inhabitants of Eastern European ghettoshave transformed themselves into farmers. working and guarding their own land. Confronted with the problem of competing with cheap Arab labor and the unproductivity of individual farm holdings in the marshy plains and the stony hill regions. these new settlers organized after much experimentation communities of friends who tilled the land in common. shared their knowledge and what machinery they had. and divided the fruits of their labor. The Jewish immigrants from Europe were acquainted with an agricultural pattern differing fundamentally from that of the American tradition. Instead of large individual farms separated miles apart from one another which are familiar to Americans. a village system predominates in Europe. Farmers live in village communities and go out to till the land lying outside of the village walls.