SUCCESS AND WEALTH

http://www.solhaam.org/articles/kibbut.html

The success of the kibbutzim became a byword in Israel. Agriculture in Israel was more capital intensive than in the USA. While urban life was tough and insecure in a taxing climate, kibbutz members had a secure and high standard of living and a good quality of life.

Life on a prosperous kibbutz includes its cultural centre or concert hall, use of swimming pool and tennis courts, film shows, lectures and concerts. <2>

As an open-air swimming pool was replaced by an even bigger one, as a new concert hall was built, as factories were started and outside labour was employed, the rest of Israel saw them as living in a 'paradise on earth', as a 'community of millionaires'. And there are many struggling Israelis who see kibbutz wealth and life-style as the result of state handouts.


How come? And what does the future hold? So let us look in a little more detail at what actually happened.

The kibbutzim were backed and supported by world-wide Jewish communities. Much if not most of the money was channelled through the Jewish Agency (Sochnut) which financed, or else provided, water supplies, electric power, roads and capital for land (when required), housing, equipment, machinery, livestock.

Here are some simple figures {KIB 04}:

Take agriculture. Take the year 1975. In that year alone farmers received USD 130 million <3> in unlinked loans, about 83 per cent of the total investment in agriculture. 'A good part of these loans were given by the Jewish Agency, for the traditional 50 years at 2 per cent, unlinked of course, and with a grace period <4> of 20 years'.

At Israeli inflation rates of about 40 per cent each year all the loans mentioned are practically wiped out in seven years, never mind 50 years. The loans were, for all practical purposes, free gifts to agricultural settlements <5>.

Kibbutzim received unlinked fifty-year loans with repayment starting after ten or twenty years. At interest rates far below rate of inflation, the amounts being paid back to the Sochnut were negligible compared with the loans received, in effect a free gift.

The success and wealth of kibbutzim resulted from large capital sums provided without strings by world-wide Jewish communities at considerable hardship to the communities.

No wonder the riches and success of the kibbutzim and of kibbutznicks (kibbutz members) became a byword in Israel. Living a good life in paradise on earth, that is how the rest of Israel saw them.