Last rites for socialist Zionism
JVL Introduction
This article will have resonances for all those who were attracted to Zionism in their youth, particularly in the period prior to 1967.
Then it was the kibbutzim that incarnated the Zionist dream, with their collective work ethic, communal childcare practices and a radical egalitarianism often grounded on a firm socialist base.
Alas, that’s not all they were. I and others who yearned for kibbutz life in our youth, were painfully unaware of their central role in “redeeming” the land, in other word, occupying it and later protecting it on the borders or on the sites of demolished Palestinian villages and expelled Palestinians.
The socialist dream vanished long ago but lives on in illusions still held by many liberal Zionists about kibbutz life.
This article, drawing on an interview with Nir Meir, secretary general of the Kibbutz movement, should be the final nail in the coffin of kibbutz illusions, if a nail is still needed:
The differences between the West Bank settlers and kibbutzim are cosmetic, says author Jonathan Ofir. Meir and the kibbutz movement today accept the logic of the political right: “It’s by settlement and only by settlement that sovereignty can be imposed.”
RK
This article was originally published by Mondoweiss on Fri 1 Mar 2024. Read the original here.
Kibbutz leader confirms movement’s role in establishing and maintaining Israeli apartheid
The kibbutz has long been celebrated by liberals as an example of Israel’s socialist pedigree, but movement head Nir Meir says the “first mission” of kibbutzim was “to conquer the land,” and today it stands ready to “maintain outposts” by Gaza.
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Jonathan Ofir’s article is nothing new.
Kibbutzim were stockade & watchtower outposts to grab as much land.
Kibbutzim were Jewish only.
Kibbutzim were sponsored & supported by Arthur Ruppin, a believer in the racial sciences who had a famous discussion with Hans Guenther, Himmler’s ideological mentor at Jenna University in August 1933, which he’d escribed as a ‘pleasant encounter’ in his diaries.
The Greater Israel movement from its inception was supported by the heroes of the ‘left’ Zionists – Tabenkin, Yigal Allon, Yisrael Gallili
The Kibbutzim were the base of Palmach which perpetrated some of the worst atrocities in the Nakba
The Kibbutzim had nothing to do with class struggle, the basis of socialism. Their methods were collective but this wasn’t unique in settler colonialism.
A whole generation of fools in the social democratic wing of Labour saw the Kibbutzim as socialist because of their racism in seeing something positive in colonialism and their blind spot when it came to the indigenous population.
Today the only role of socialist Zionism is to whitewash far-right Zionism and Ben Gvir abroad
Horrific account!
The logic of Nir Meir’s comments is that Kibbutzim are legitimate targets for the Palestinian resistance. In this he agrees with Hamas..
I’m saddened to read this article.
I’ve always held out the hope that socialism would be used as a pathway to peace, in Palestine. A romantic notion!
I should have known better, at my age. How naïve was I?
It wasn’t just young Jews who were connected to the very idea of Israel by the Kibbutzim, but at least one young Roman Catholic in the process of rejecting his faith. The myth of the Kibbutz fitted nicely with the anti-family postures of R.D. Laing and David Cooper and suggested (to the gullible) an alternative, socialist way of valuing relationships that extended well beyond one’s own biological family, when the latter was held to be the only way of defining who you were and where your loyalties lay. (It was always the Tories who were banging on about “the family” and “law and order”.)
The kibbutz movement has been an effective way of disguising ethnic cleansing and “redeeming” the land and this article shows how obvious it was – once you twigged!
We shouldn’t be surprised: the Jewish National Fund has shown how the virtuous planting of trees (is there a more wholesome symbol than a tree?) can serve to hide a crime scene and prevent expelled Palestinians having any notion of ever returning to their lands.
My illusions were shattered a long time ago but I haven’t previously been aware of the kibbutzim and the settlements being one and the same.
Years ago I read an article in a Newspaper about the Israeli Kibbutz, the description of how they started and grew, sounded idyllic, a community all working for each other, through both the good and the tough times.
It wasn’t until I joined a number of Social Media political groups and the subject of Israel was being discussed, that I realised that all those years of believing that the Kibbutz way of life was romantic, that it wasn’t romantic at all. Of course I’ve gone on to understand the full story of how Israel came about, the Nakba in 1948 and has kept going right up to today and it’s frightening, the Genocide/Ethnic Cleansing is heinous and inhuman, worse still is, it is supported by the US and UK Governments, including both of their Opposition Parties. Can People Power change things, I pray that it does.