AHC: Socialist Israel?

Your challenge is to have a socialist Jewish state with a POD no earlier than January 1st, 1900. Bonus points for getting OTL Israel to go socialist, and even better if you can make Palestine and/or another Middle East historically pro-Palestine country be a Western ally.

Good luck, and may the odds be ever in your favour.
 
If by "Socialist" you mean "Communist" or "Marxist-Leninist":

In the first Knesset election, the Israeli Communist party (Maki) got only 3.5% of the vote, and didn't do much better in subsequent elections. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maki_(historical_political_party) However, the much larger Mapam Party https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mapam was also pro-Soviet until it was shaken by the 1953 Prague Trials. Still, even in 1949, when the USSR was not yet as violently anti-Israel as it would be a few years later, Mapam and Maki combined only got about 18 percent of the vote. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_legislative_election,_1949 So it is hard for me to see a Marxist-Leninist Israel coming about.

If by Socialist you mean Social Democratic, then as others have pointed out, this is not really a what-if at all, since Mapai and then the Israeli Labor Party were the dominant force in Israeli politics for almost the first three decades of independence.
 
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If you mean Soviet client in my humble opinion the answer is no.
Well the original poster doesn't mention client state in their post, so whilst it was somewhat out of the norm you could have a socialist Israel that maintained their independence like Cuba and China did. Have the West follow a 'realist' foreign policy remaining firmly committed to the Arab side? In reaction Israel would likely have to lean ever more toward the Soviets. Closer ties and the strong socialist parties having cracked open the door could perhaps see an actual communist party do better in elections.
 
Democratic Socialists dominated Israeli politics for the first 30 years after independence. Labor Zionists had been an overwhelming majority of the Yishuv before 1948 as well, the first settlements were organized as socialist agricultural communes.

If you make increase the Ashkenazi population in Israel or reduce aliyah from the Arab world for some reason, then Israel might be more heavily socialist. Politics originally followed cultural lines, with most of the Eastern European population attracted to secular leftist politics, and Sephardic Jews attracted to more religious and right-wing politics. There have been prominent right-wing Ashkenazi politicians in Israel like Menachem Begin and Benjamin Netanyahu, but their voter base are generally the descendants of Jews from North Africa and the Middle East.

It's somewhat implausible to see Stalin have a sudden change of heart about his antisemitism to form a close alliance with Israel, or for antisemitism in the Arab world to magically vanish after 1948 so Sephardic Jews have no reason to leave their homes.
 
Israel effectively was socialist until the 1977 elections. The early Jewish immigrants were either socialists, Labor Zionists, or generally left-wing. Kibbutzim (collective agricultural communities) were created all over the country and they're still around, though most have become capitalist nowadays. Mapai, the main Jewish socialist party in Israel, dominated Israeli politics until 1977 and effectively ran the country from independence until then.

A Communist Israel isn't really possible, though you might be able to get a more democratic socialist Israel.

Well the original poster doesn't mention client state in their post, so whilst it was somewhat out of the norm you could have a socialist Israel that maintained their independence like Cuba and China did. Have the West follow a 'realist' foreign policy remaining firmly committed to the Arab side? In reaction Israel would likely have to lean ever more toward the Soviets. Closer ties and the strong socialist parties having cracked open the door could perhaps see an actual communist party do better in elections.

You'd need a massive change in Soviet leadership for that to work. Stalin was notoriously and exceptionally antisemitic.
 
Have Mapai enter into a coalition with Mapam in 1949 rather than with the liberal and religious parties:

http://www.uchronia.net/label/shavnizhch.html

Very, very unlikely, given Ben Gurion's attitude toward Mapam: "The Mapam delegates are understood to have brought up today Premier David Ben Gurion’s recent speech in which he labeled Mapam as forerunners and advocates in Israel of “Yewsektia”–the “Jewish section” of the Soviet Communist Party"... https://www.jta.org/1949/11/06/arch...pai-continue-leftists-present-minimum-demands

To quote a typical speech of Ben Gurion's:

"There is a big difference between Communism and our war against Communism, and the Yevsektsiya and our war against it ... The debate between us and Jewish Communists is double-edged. It has a global aspect as a debate between Socialism and Communism, in which we may sometimes reach common ground. Two years ago we met at Lake Success [where the U.N. voted for the partition of Palestine into Jewish and Arab states] and the Communists were in favor of a Jewish state and in favor of partition ... There need be no conflict at every international convention. But this is not the case with the Yevsektsiya. This is an internal Jewish debate, in which there can be no agreement ... They hated Zion in our movement even without Communism, just as the Bund, which is non-Communist and more anti-Soviet than many among us, hates Zion. Their conception conflicts with ours, and hence there can be no contact, no provisional agreement, between us and the Yevsektsiya." https://books.google.com/books?id=lS7ti_loZMkC&pg=PA47

If nothing else, foreign policy would rule out a Mapai-Mapam government. To quote (from June 1949) Mordechai Namir, a Mapai leader and Israel's second Minister to the USSR:

"I do not understand the soft and apologetic line toward Mapam which I sense from reading our press: I emphasize Mapam because we are creating a disastrous injustice, with far-reaching implications for the objective truth and for the education of our youth, if we differentiate between them and Maki [Israel's Communist Party]. I do not deny that there are theoretical and practical differences in several important areas between them; likewise I do not cast doubt on Mapam's Zionism. But after the creation of the state the former demarcation line dividing ourselves and our internal enemies [Zionism and anti-Zionism] has lost much of its significance. In conditions of a world cut into two blocs, with our state, located as it is at a geopolitical flashpoint desperately striving to hold on to neutrality, foreign policy issues are, at least for the foreseeable future, real determinants in our inter-party relations. This is precisely the partition line between ourselves and Mapam ... It is unquestionably in the field of foreign policy that Mapam does not really differ at all from Maki — both openly preach a unilateral orientation toward the East. For this reason, and not because they [Mapam] are excluded from our government, a wretched ideology of two motherlands has arisen. For one of them [Russia] there is an excuse for everything: dictatorship, abolition of civil liberties, expansion, anti-Zionism, anti-Hebraism (which now includes anti-Yiddishism) to the verge of annihilation of the character of Russian Jewry. But for the second motherland, the stepmother [Israel], there is not even a drop of compassion and pity, no matter how difficult its position may be. We should not be confused and bewildered by the glory of their kibbutzim and by the heroism of their members on the battlefield [during the 1948 War]. There is no doubt that their rank and file are loyal and devoted, but it is not they who determine political policy. That is the prerogative of the leadership, and they are Communist as far as the basic principle which decides this issue in this period of mankind is concerned. Their kibbutzim and whatever they have are directed at one target -- the destruction of the emerging sovereign existence of Israel as an independent Jewish political unit ... Their participation in government would not at all improve their behavior. Their ability to harm, well-established while in opposition, would no doubt only grow were they to be included in our cabinet." https://books.google.com/books?id=lS7ti_loZMkC&pg=PA47

Not everyone in Mapai was quite as vehement against Mapam as Ben Gurion or Namir were, and some hoped that Mapam could be turned back from extremism--but I don't think anyone of significance in Mapai wanted a purely Mapai-Mapam government. Such a government could only convince the world that Israel was not truly non-aligned but pro-Soviet--and yet it would not be enough to satisfy the Soviets! Mapam was in any event a dangerous ideological as well as electoral rival. The Progressives and General Zionists, who had no clear program (beyond an amorphous liberalism or moderate conservatism) were easier coalition partners, as were the religious parties which in those days could be mollified by concessions to the religious which would not affect basic foreign or economic policy.
 
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I have a feeling that Einstein accepting the Presidency in 1952 result in increased leftward momentum, as well as a more coherent road to peace for the region (at least, compared to OTL), which would in turn allow the political situation to maintain itself.
 
I had a post some years ago in soc.history.whar-if on socialism and the kibbutz movement:

***
Most of the early kibbutzim were affiliated with socialists of one kind or
another. In 1953, Noam Chomsky lived in Israel on HaZore'a kibbutz, whch
was a creation of the Marxist-Zionist group Hashomer Hatzair. (Hashomer
Hatzair was one of the groups that formed the MAPAM party, a party that in
the late 1940's and early 1950's was almost as pro-Soviet as the Israeli
Communist Party. About two-thirds of Hashomer Hatzair's members belonged
to the kibbutz federation Kibbutz Artzi--"National Kibbutz.") Chomsky
later wrote that he generally enjoyed his kibbutz experience, but one thing
he did not like was the politics of some of the people there: "There were
very interesting people there, but it was surreal in some ways. This was
1953, at the time of the Slansky trials in Czechoslovakia and the last
stages of Stalinist lunacy. These late Stalin purges had a strong anti-
Semitic element, but people there actually defended them. They even
defended the trial of a fellow kibbutz member who was an emissary of the
kibbutz movement there and was charged with being a spy, which they knew to
be false. Not all did, of course. Those who thought about these things --
many did not -- were orthodox Marxist-Leninists, and I could discern no
visible departure from a fairly rigid party line, though there may well
have been much that I never saw."
http://www.chomsky.info/books/reader01.htm

The man Chomsky is talking about was presumably Mordechai Oren,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mordechai_Oren who "confessed" in Prague in
the usual manner: "Before I say anything about Slansky I want to say
something about myself. I was an active member Zionist organizations and
acted against the people's democracies . Also I was in contact with
espionage agencies and had to coordinate espionage activities, because
since 1934, I had also served as an agent for the British Secret Service .
Since 1945 my special missions were to conduct espionage operations against
the people's democracies, especially Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia,
Bulgaria, Romania and the East Germany. As part of the espionage I
continued my work for international Zionist organizations." Oren was
released from prison after the Twentieth Congress of the CPSU, returned to
Israel, repudiated his confession as the product of torture--and announced
that his political views were unchanged, he was still a pro-Soviet
socialist...

(Incidentally, in those days, left-wing and even pro-Soviet politics in
Israel did not necessarily equate to concessions to the Arabs on the
Palestinian question. For example, another component of MAPAM was Ahdut
Ha'avodah. The Kibbutz me'Uhad (United Kibbutz) federation of kibbutzim
was Ahdut Ha'avodah's social base. According to Joel Beinin, *Was the Red
Flag Flying There? Marxist Politics and the Arab Israeli-Conflict in Egypt
and Israel, 1948-1965*, p. 26, "Like the majority of labor Zionists, Ahdut
Ha'avodah did not recognize the national rights of Palestinian Arabs.
Instead it favored a socialist Jewish state in all of Palestine. Kibbutz
Me'uhad's leader, Yitzhak Tabenkin, even advocated 'transferring' the
Palestinian Arabs out of the country. Ahdut Ha'avodah opposed admitting
Arabs to the Histadrut [trade union federation], did not admit Arabs to its
own ranks, and later opposed MAPAM's admission of Arab members."
http://books.google.com/books?id=Se3h1y-aRX0C&pg=PA26 )

Of course I wouldn't want to portray the far-left politics of MAPAM as
typical of all kibbutzim. Many were affiliated with the more moderate
socialism of MAPAI. And there were also religious kibbutzim. Still, the
overwhelming orientation of the early kibbutz movement was socialist in one
form or another...

https://soc.history.what-if.narkive.com/LBKcVkXJ/leon-trotsky-testifies-to-huac-1940#post89
 
I have a feeling that Einstein accepting the Presidency in 1952 result in increased leftward momentum, as well as a more coherent road to peace for the region (at least, compared to OTL), which would in turn allow the political situation to maintain itself.

Not really. The Israeli presidency is a largely ceremonial role with little, if any, powers. Einstein would have definitely been a huge name to be attached to Israel especially so soon after independence, but he wouldn't have really pushed Israel leftwards. At best, you might get an Einstein University and some other places named after him.
 
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