Socialists have long debated why it is that the Israeli working class has never been able to break with Zionism and ally itself with Palestinians in the struggle for democracy and equality. In fact, the Israeli working class has consistently subordinated the class struggle to its own nationalism. An important Marxist analysis of this was written by two members of the Israeli Socialist Organization (Matzpen), Akiva Orr and Moshe Machover, in the late 1960s, which made a distinction between the imperialist role Israel performs and the unique attributes of the Israeli working class. This talk will revisit the analysis of Orr and Machover and use it as a lens to understand the nature of the Israeli working class in subsequent decades up to today.