DAVID TWERSKY
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sion of socialism. Left-Zionist Mapam is pro-Stalin in international
affairs, as are the Communists . All in all, Trotsky is a round peg set
loose on a board filled with square holes: he cannot fit in .
The debate between Ben-Gurion and Mapam about the
Palmach provides the context for Trotsky's curious entrance on the
political stage . The Palmach was organized before Rommel's defeat
at EI-Alamein when the Zionist leadership feared a German occupa–
tion of Palestine . With no budget, the new force relied on the kibbut–
zim for support. Naturally, many Palmach officers were recruited
from the collective farms and their youth movements . But the
Palmach's greatest strength, the elan and tightly knit camaraderie of
these recruits, now proves its undoing. Ben-Gurion wants to con–
solidate the political militias - Palmach on the left, Irgun on the
right-into one army, loyal to the state. Using a Palmach unit, he
has already moved decisively to crush Irgun's independence, open–
ing fire at a ship laden with arms purchased by Irgun in the waters
ofT Tel Aviv. (Yitshak Rabin gave the order for the artillery to open
fire . Menachem Begin narrowly escaped with his life . The
Altelena
went down . The Irgunists went down politically, into an isolation it
took them thirty years to escape .)
Now Ben-Gurion was incorporating the Palmach into the new
Israeli army . Palmach's officer elite were overwhelmingly Mapam–
oriented, and Ben Gurion sees them as a potential threat from the
left. He retires many of them from active service and refuses to pro–
mote others.
Palmach leaders and their Mapam commissars speak darkly of
the dangers of a "state army" crushing strikes and quote Mao Tse–
tung on the importance of a workers' militia. They see the disap–
pearance of the Palmach as a further example of Ben Gurion's
emergent
estatist
philosophy and as the beginning of the emascula–
tion of the independent labor movement. (Soon the independent
labor schools will be incorporated into a state-run public system. Of
all their prestate institutions, only the Histadrut Sick Fund,
Kupat
Holim,
will survive the "purge," a sad commentary on the health of
Israeli socialism .)
Trotsky is baffled by his own reaction. Although sympathetic to
the argumentation of the left, he supports Ben-Gurion. The creator
of the Red Army, the crusher of Kronstadt, has had enough ex–
perience to understand that the revolutionary state must concentrate
all power in its hands . His mistake had been to be outmaneuvered
by that Georgian moustache. He did not fear that Ben-Gurion could
