finance its elections, institutions and worldwide network of contacts. These kibbutzim have an annual turnover of hundreds of millions of Israeli pounds after branching out into industry and many other economic enterprises. They expect the party to see to it that they are liberally provided with government funds and credits, a factor which plays a great role whenever the party is called upon to decide whether or not to join a government coalition.
The National Religious party has two banks and several great economic enterprises, apart from providing many thousands of jobs for rabbis, superintendents of kosher cooking, anti-pig inspectors, and other diverse religious officials, whose salaries are paid by the government, municipal institutions, hotels, shipping lines, and so forth, all the result of the party's continuing success in religious coercion.
The right wing parties control many economic enterprises, generally in a less direct way. But the business interests of all the fringe parties are overshadowed by the economic power of Mapai, the dominant force on the political scene since the early Thirties. Mapai has managed to concentrate enormous power in all fields of endeavorfrom banks and giant corporations right down to the associations of newsstand owners and small tradesmen.
It has been estimated that during the 1965 elections, Mapai spent on its campaign more than $50 million, with the other Zionist parties spending proportionate amounts, and even the smallest investing several million-all this in a country whose population is roughly equivalent to that of Brooklyn.
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Not by accident do Zionist parties function as I have described them, nor is it by chance that all are Zionist. In the Zionist past they had to deal with matters which made such machinery necessary. As usual, the machinery continued to flourish and expand long after the need for