Poale Zion

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Poale Zion
פועלי ציון‎
LeaderYa'akov Zerubavel
Foundedearly 20th century
IdeologyMarxism
Labor Zionism
Socialism
Centrist Marxism
Political positionLeft-wing

Poale Zion (also spelled Poalei Tziyon or Poaley Syjon, meaning "Workers of Zion") was a movement of

Bund rejected Zionism in 1901.[1][2][3]

Formation and early years

chart of zionist workers partiesHapoel HatzairNon PartisansPoalei ZionHaPoel HaMizrachiAhdut HaAvodaPoalei Zion LeftMapaiHaOved HaTzioniAhdut HaAvoda MovementAhdut HaAvoda Poalei ZIonMapamHaShomer Hatzair Workers' PartyHaShomer HaTzairSocialist League of PalestineMapaiHaPoel HaMizrachiLabor Zionism
chart of zionist workers parties

Ideology

The key features of the ideology of early Poale Zion were acceptance of the

class struggle
. These views were set out in Borochov's Our Platform, published in 1906.

Early parties and organisations

Płońsk, 1905. David Grün (David Ben-Gurion
) in the first row, third on the right.
Poalei Zion members in Warsaw, Congress Poland, 1905. Standing, from right to left: Eliezer Salzkin and Yitzhak Tabenkin. Sitting, from right to left: Max Tabenkin, who never emigrated to Israel, Eva Tabenkin, Yosef Zaltzman and Elkana Horowitz.
The editorial staff of HaAhdut. Right to left: seated – Yitzhak Ben-Zvi, David Ben-Gurion, Yosef Haim Brenner; standing – Aharon Reuveni (Ben-Zvi's brother), Ya'akov Zerubavel (1910).

Poale Zion parties and organisations were started across the

Leon Blum.[11] By 1907, the party had 25,000 members in Russia.[12]

With the threat of pogroms, and meeting clandestinely, the Warsaw Poale Zion formed a commando unit (bojówka) with around sixty guns. They were used to "expropriate" funds from well-to-do citizens. In March 1906 the entire Warsaw leadership were amongst the 120 delegates arrested attending the Poale Zion conference in Poltava. Three months later eighteen gunmen raided Warsaw railway station, stealing cash and leaving "a receipt in the name of Warsaw's Poale Zion".[13]

Global coordination

A World Union of Poale Zion was formed. The first World Congress took place in August 1907 in The Hague. Its second congress in 1909 in Kraków emphasised practical socialist projects in Palestine, further congresses followed in Vienna (1911 and 1920) and Stockholm (1919).

Palestine

A conference in the name of the Jewish Social-Democratic Workers' Party in the Land of Israel was held in

David Ben Gurion.[14]

As a result the following January they produced The

Communist Manifesto with the added declaration: 'the party aspires to political independence of the Jewish People in this country."[16][15] After much debate they agreed that there should be segregation of Jewish and Arab economies.[17] It was also agreed that all Poale Zion business should be conducted in Hebrew, though this was not the larger group's policy which held that proceedings should be in Yiddish or Ladino depending on the community. Hebrew was seen as the language of the bourgeoisie.[18] At the time there were 550 active pioneers, Jews working on the land, in the country.[17]

In Ottoman Palestine, Poale Zion founded the Hashomer guard organization that guarded settlements of the Yishuv, and took up the ideology of "conquest of labor" (Kibbush Ha'avoda) and "Hebrew labor" (Avoda Ivrit). The first formal congress of the "Jewish Social Democratic Workers' Party in the Land of Israel–Poalei Tziyon" was held in early 1907. Poale Zion set up employment offices, kitchens and health services for members. These eventually evolved into the institutions of Labor Zionism in Israel.[19]

UK during World War I

During

Labour Party's War Aims Memorandum, recognising the 'right of return' of Jews to Palestine, a document which preceded the Balfour Declaration by three months.[21]

Factions and activity after World War I

Factions, 1920 split and aftermath

Poale Zion was torn between left-wing and right-wing factions in 1919–1920; the organization formally split at the Poale Zion fifth world congress in Vienna in 1920, following a similar division that occurred in the Second International.[7]

The right wing was less Marxist and more nationalist, and favoured a more moderate socialist program and supported the

social democratic party. The left-wing faction did not consider the Second International radical enough, and some accused its members of betraying Borochov's revolutionary principles[citation needed] (although Borochov had begun to modify his ideology as early as 1914, and publicly identified as a social democrat the year before his death[citation needed
]).

Poale Zion Left, which supported the

Comintern advised individual members of Left Poale Zion to join their national Communist parties as individuals; at their 1922 Danzig conference, these terms were rejected by the party. The Comintern declared it an enemy of the workers' movement.[22]

Poale Zion Left opposed the decision by Poale Zion to rejoin the World

modern Hebrew movement in the early 20th century.[24]

Palestine

In Palestine, the major leaders of Poale Zion since their immigration in 1906 and 1907 had been David Ben-Gurion, who joined a local Poalei Tziyon group in 1904 whilst living in Warsaw, and Yitzhak Ben-Zvi, a close friend of Borochov and an early member of the Poltava group. After the split the two Benim ("the Bens") continued to control and direct Poale Zion Right in Palestine.[citation needed]

The party in Palestine split into right and left wings at its February 1919 conference.[

Jewish Communist Party in 1921, split in 1922 over the Zionist issues, with one faction taking the name Palestine Communist Party and the more anti-Zionist faction becoming the Communist Party of Palestine. The former retained its links to Poale Zion Left. These two factions reunited as the Palestine Communist Party in 1923 and become an official section of the Communist International. Another faction of Poale Zion Left, aligned with the kibbutz movement Hashomer Hatzair, founded in Europe in 1919, became the Mapam party. Poale Zion Right, under Ben Gurion's leadership, formed Ahdut HaAvoda in March 1919. In January 1930 it merged with another party to become Mapai, predecessor of the modern Israeli Labor Party.[citation needed
]

Bolshevik Revolution and USSR

In Russia, the Poale Zion Left participated in the

Hechalutz were allowed to operate freely in the Soviet Union until 1928.[26]

Poland

In Poland, for a brief period following World War I, both factions of Poale Zion were reported as legal and functioning political parties. The Polish Left party was the largest Left Poale Zion party in the world. It worked closely with the Bund in developing Yiddish schools in Poland and supporting secular Yiddish culture, although they had political differences (e.g., the Bund was more supportive of the Polish Socialist Party than LPZ).[27] As part of the large-scale ban on Jewish political parties in post-World War II Poland by the Communist leadership, both Poale Zion groups were disbanded in February 1950.[28]

Austria

In

Austrian Communist Party in 1938. The right faction also remained active until 1938.[8]

United States

The first Poale Zion group in America was established in 1903. In 1915 it was estimated they had fewer than 3,000 members.[29] After the First World War, the American party was led by veteran socialist Zionist thinker Nachman Syrkin.[26] In America, the right faction was dominant, and initiated the National Labor Committee for Palestine, raising money for the Histadrut.[7]

Manya Shochat, one of the Poale Zion leaders in Palestine, toured the United States in 1920. Writing to Rachel Ben Zvi she estimated there were “maybe” 2,000 members of Poale Zion in the whole country, with 180 of them in New York. She comments “The entire movement here is worthless.”[30]

United Kingdom

British Labour Party in 1920.[26] It renamed itself the Jewish Labour Movement
in 2004.

Worldwide

Globally, Poale Zion, under the leadership of Shlomo Kaplansky, was involved in the 1921 formation of the centrist International Working Union of Socialist Parties,[31] then between 1923 and 1930 the World Union of Poalei Zion (i.e., the PZ right) joined the Labour and Socialist International (as its Palestine section).[32] As of 1928, it claimed to have 22,500 members in branches around the world; 5,000 in Poland and the United States, 4,000 in Palestine, 3,000 in Russia, 1,000 in Lithuania, Romania, Argentina and the United Kingdom, 500 in Latvia and another 1,000 scattered across countries such as Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Belgium, France and Brazil. The general secretary of the World Union of Poalei Zion at the time was Berl Locker. The World Union had a women's wing, the Women's Organization for the Pioneer Women in Palestine.[33]

World Union of Zionists–Socialists (1932)

In 1932, Poale Zion's world federation merged with

Jewish Agency Executive member Shlomo Kaplansky, and future Israeli politicians Moshe Sharett and Dov Hoz
.

The Holocaust

The Holocaust-era Jewish resistance group

Communist groups, and both factions of Poale Zion. Poale Zion was also active in the Anti-Fascist Bloc
.

Several notable Jewish resistance fighters during the

Holocaust, particularly those involved in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
, were members of Poale Zion. They include:

Legacy

Mandatory Palestine and Israel

After World War I,

Israeli Labour Party
.

Youth movements

Several youth movements have emerged out of Poale Zion: the Marxist Hashomer Hatzair (the largest, with 70,000 members on the eve of the Holocaust), the socialist Habonim Dror, the Left Poale Zion's Yugent, and Zeirei Zion.[35]

North America

In North America, Poale Zion founded the HeHalutz movement, the Farband and Habonim Dror, and later the Labor Zionist Organization of America, which merged with other groups into the Labor Zionist Alliance, which rebranded itself in 2007 as Ameinu. US Poale Zion published a Yiddish newspaper, the Yidisher Kempfer, and an English journal, Jewish Frontier, edited by Hayim Greenberg and Marie Syrkin.[36]

United Kingdom

In Britain, Poale Zion rebranded itself in 2004 as the Jewish Labour Movement. Its original affiliate status with the Labour Party in 1920 was as The Jewish Socialist Labour Party (Poale Zion).[37]

Worldwide

Internationally, the Poale Zion right is represented within the

World Labour Zionist Movement; the group "to the left" of the WLZM within the WZO is Mapam's successor, the World Union of Meretz. Meretz succeeded Mapam as a member of the Socialist International[38] and, since 2013, is also a member of the Progressive Alliance.[39]

See also

References

  1. ^ "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 5 September 2017. Retrieved 5 September 2017.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  2. ^ "Po'alei Zion". www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org.
  3. ^ "Glossary - Virtual Shtetl". www.sztetl.org.pl. Archived from the original on 14 April 2017.
  4. ^ Raffel, Martin J. "History of Israel Advocacy". In Mittleman, Alan; Sarna, Jonathan D.; Licht, Robert (eds.). Jewish Polity and American Civil Society: Communal Agencies and Religious Movements in the American Public Sphere. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. p. 106.
  5. ^ Cohen, Stuart A. English Zionists and British Jews: The Communal Politics of Anglo-Jewry, 1895–1920. Princeton University Press. pp. 59–60.
  6. ^ Fishman, William (1975). East End Jewish Radicals. London: Duckworth. p. 306.
  7. ^ a b c Mendes 2014, p. 217.
  8. ^ a b Mendes 2014, p. 158.
  9. ^ a b "Jewish Labour Movement". Archived from the original on 27 September 2007.
  10. Clarendon Press
    . p. 175.
  11. ^ Edmunds, June. The Left's Views on Israel: From the establishment of the Jewish state to the intifada (PDF) (PhD). London School of Economics. p. 180.
  12. ^ Mendes 2014, p. 134.
  13. ^ Teveth 1987, pp. 30, 34.
  14. ^ a b Teveth 1987, p. 45.
  15. ^ a b Lockman 1996, pp. 46–47.
  16. ISBN 0-297-77401-8
    .
  17. ^ a b Teveth 1987, p. 48.
  18. ^ Teveth 1987, p. 44 footnote.
  19. ^ "Poalei Tziyon - Zionism and Israel -Encyclopedia / Dictionary/Lexicon of Zionism/Israel/". www.zionism-israel.com.
  20. ^ Martin Watts, The Jewish Legion and the First World War, Palgrave McMillian: Hampshire, 2004, pg. 155.
  21. ^ Gorny, Joseph. "1". The British Labour Movement and Zionism: 1917–1948. London: Frank Cass.
  22. ^ a b Mendes 2014, p. 100.
  23. ^ D. Flisiak, Wybrane materiały ideologiczne i propagandowe Syjonistyczno-Socjalistycznej Partii Robotniczej Poalej Syjon-Hitachdut. Przyczynek do badań nad lewicą syjonistyczną w pierwszych latach powojennej Polski (1944/45-1949/50), Chrzan 2021, s.13.
  24. ^ "Poale Zion Collection". www.yivoarchives.org.
  25. ^ "Dov Ber Borochov. Part of 1860-1948: Early Zionist Age (archived copy), World Zionist Org., Hagshama Dept". Archived from the original on 28 September 2007. Retrieved 28 September 2007.
  26. ^ a b c Mendes 2014.
  27. ^ Mendes 2014, p. 138.
  28. ^ D. Flisiak, Wybrane materiały ideologiczne i propagandowe Syjonistyczno-Socjalistycznej Partii Robotniczej Poalej Syjon-Hitachdut. Przyczynek do badań nad lewicą syjonistyczną w pierwszych latach powojennej Polski (1944/45-1949/50), Chrzan 2021, s. 17-24.
  29. ^ Teveth 1987, p. 100.
  30. ^
    ISBN 0-930395-07-7
    p.174
  31. ^ Gorny, Joseph. The British Labour Movement and Zionism: 1917–1948. London: Frank Cass.
  32. ^ Kowalski, Werner (1985). Geschichte der sozialistischen arbeiter-internationale: 1923 – 1940 [History of the Socialist Workers' International: 1923 - 1940] (in German). Berlin: Dt. Verl. d. Wissenschaften. p. 314.
  33. ^ Labour and Socialist International. Kongress-Protokolle der Sozialistischen Arbeiter-Internationale - B. 3.1 Brüssel 1928. Glashütten im Taunus: D. Auvermann, 1974. p. IV. 100
  34. ^ Medoff, Rafael; Waxman, Chaim I. (5 September 2013). Historical Dictionary of Zionism. Routledge.
  35. ^ Mendes 2014, p. 218.
  36. ^ David Bridger, Samuel Wolk, The New Jewish Encyclopedia, Behrman House, Inc, 1976, p.381
  37. ^ Minutes of Labour Party's NEC, 5 February 1920
  38. ^ "Israel". European Forum for Democracy and Solidarity. Archived from the original on 15 January 2015.
  39. ^ "Parties & Organisations". Retrieved 2 June 2017.

Bibliography

External links
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