- Poale Zion
Poale Zion (also spelled Poalei Tziyon or Poaley Syjon, meaning "Workers of Zion") was a Movement of Marxist Zionist
Jew ish workers circles founded in various cities of theRussian Empire about the turn of the century after the Bund rejectedZionism in 1901.Formation and early years
Poale Zion parties and organisations were started across the Jewish
diaspora in the early 1900s. A branch of Poale Zion came into existence inNew York City in 1903. [Martin J Raffel “History of Israel Advocacy” in Alan Mittleman, Jonathan D Sarna and Robert Licht, eds, "Jewish Polity and American Civil Society: Communal Agencies and Religious Movements in the American Public Sphere" Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, p.106] Branches were formed in London and Leeds in 1903/04 and 1905 respectively. [Stuart A Cohen English Zionists and British Jews: "The Communal Politics of Anglo-Jewry, 1895-1920" Princeton University Press, p.59-60; William Fishman "East End Jewish Radicals" London: Duckworth 1975 p.306] In November 1905 the Poale Zion (Workers of Zion) Party was founded inPalestine and a month later the Socialist Jewish Labour Party (Poale Zion) was formed in theUnited States andCanada . [ [http://www.jlm.org.uk/cgi-bin/sitetools.cgi?task=servepage&id=33 Jewish Labour Movement] ] In March 1906 the Jewish Social Democratic Labour Party (Poale Zion) was created in Russia. [ [http://www.jlm.org.uk/cgi-bin/sitetools.cgi?task=servepage&id=33 Jewish Labour Movement] ] In 1906 a formal Poale Zion party was formed inPoltava , Ukraine, under the leadership ofBer Borochov , and other groups were soon formed elsewhere in Europe, including inPoland ,Austria and theUK .Fact|date=July 2007The key features of the ideology of early Poale Zion were acceptance of the
Marxist view of history with the addition of the role ofnationalism , which Borochov believed could not be ignored as a factor in historical development. A Jewish proletariat would come into being in the land of Israel, according to Poale Zion, and would then take part in theclass struggle . These views were set out in Borochov's "Our Platform", published in 1906.A World Union of Poale Zion was formed. Its second congress in 1909 emphasised practical socialist projects in Palestine. 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 "Avoda Ivrit" ("Hebrew labor "). Poale Zion set up employment offices, kitchens and health services for members. These eventually evolved into the institutions of labor Zionism in Israel. DuringWorld War I , Poale Zion was instrumental in recruiting members to theJewish Legion .Poale Zion was active in Britain during World War I, under the leadership of J Pomeranz and
Morris Meyer , and influential on the British labour movement, including on the drafting (bySidney Webb andArthur Henderson ) of the Labour Party’s War Aims Memorandum, recognising the 'right of return ' of Jews to Palestine, a document which preceded theBalfour Declaration by three months. [Joseph Gorny The British Labour Movement and Zionism: 1917-1948 London: Frank Cass, ch.1]plit
Poale Zion split into Left and Right factions in 1919-1920, following a similar division that occurred in the
Second International and at least partially resulting from some activists' concern with the ongoing chaos and violence occurring in Bolshevik-controlled Russia.The right wing (also known as "Rightist Poale Zion", "Poale Zion Right", or simply "Poale Zion") was non-Marxist, favored a more moderate socialist program and strongly affiliated itself with the Second International, essentially becoming a
social-democratic party. Since their immigration to Palestine in 1906 and 1907, the major leaders of Poale Zion had beenDavid Ben-Gurion , who joined a local Poalei Tziyon group in 1904 as a student at theUniversity of Warsaw , andYitzhak Ben-Zvi , a close friend of Borochov's and early member of the Poltava group. After the split the two "Benim" ("the Bens") continued to control and direct Poale Zion Right in Palestine, eventually merging it with other movements to form larger constituencies.The left wing (also known as "Leftist Poale Zion" or "Poale Zion Left") did not consider the Second International radical enough and some went so far as to accuse members who associated with it to have betrayed Borochov's revolutionary principles (ironically, Borochov had begun to modify his ideology as early as 1914, and publicly identified as a social-democrat the year before his death). Poale Zion Left, which supported the
Bolshevik revolution , continued to be strongly sympathetic toMarxism andCommunism , and repeatedly lobbied the Soviet Union for membership in theCommunist International . Their attempts were unsuccessful, as the Soviets (particularly non-Zionist Jewish members) continued to be suspicious of Zionism's nationalist tendencies, and some party leaders also held personal grudges against the group's members.The Poale Zion in
Palestine split into right and left wings at its February/March 1919 conference. In October 1919, a faction of the Left Poale Zion founded the "Mifleget Poalim Sozialistiim" (Socialist Workers Party) which would be renamed the Jewish Communist Party in 1921, split in 1922 over the question of Zionism with one faction taking the name Palestinian Communist Party and the more anti-Zionist faction becoming theCommunist Party of Palestine . The former retained its links to the Poale Zion left. These two factions would reunite as thePalestine Communist Party in 1923 and become an official section of theCommunist International . Another faction of the Left Poale Zion aligned with the kibbutz movementHashomer Hatzair , founded in Europe in 1919, would eventually become theMapam party.The Poale Zion Left in Russia participated in the
Bolshevik revolution. Borochov himself returned to Russia following theFebruary Revolution and organized brigades of Poale Zion activists [http://www.hagshama.org.il/en/resources/view.asp?id=1343] , nicknamed "Borochov Brigades", to fight in theRed Army . The party remained legal until 1928 when it was liquidated by theNKVD . Most other Zionist organizations had been closed down in 1919, and it seems likely that Poale Zion Left was allowed to continue to operate because it had been an officially recognized "Communistic" party. In 1919, the Communists of the Poale Zion Left split to form the Jewish Communist Party which ultimately joined theCommunist Party of the Soviet Union , leading to a sharp loss of membership in Russia. The left faction enjoyed more success and popularity in Britain and Poland until World War II.As well as their differing attitudes towards
Stalinism , the two wings of Poale Zion also parted ways concerning the use of and development ofYiddish and Yiddish culture, with the Left generally being more supportive of Yiddish culture, similar to the members of theJewish Bund , with the Right bloc identifying more strongly with the emerging modern Hebrew movement that became popular among the Zionist movement during the early 1900s.For a brief period following the war, both factions of Poale Zion were reported as legal and "functioning" political parties in Poland, but it is unclear how viable they continued to be. As part of the large-scale ban on Jewish political parties in post-war Poland by the Communist leadership, both Poale Zion groups were disbanded in February, 1950.
The Holocaust
The Holocaust-era Jewish resistance group
ŻOB was formed from a coalition includingHashomer Hatzair , Dror,Bnei Akiva , the Jewish Bund, various JewishCommunist groups, and both factions of Poale Zion.Several notable Jewish resistance fighters during the
Holocaust , particularly those involved in theWarsaw Ghetto Uprising , were members of Poale Zion. They include:*
Adolf Berman , Warsaw ZOB fighter; Secretary ofZegota . (Poale Zion Left)
* Hersz Berlinksi, member of Warsaw ZOB Command (Poale Zion Left)
* Yochanan Morgenstern, member of Warsaw ZOB Command (Poale Zion Right)
*Emmanuel Ringelblum , member of Warsaw ZOB; chronicler of the Warsaw Ghetto. (Poale Zion Left)Additionally, several well-known Zionist leaders and politicians were members of Poale Zion, including Ben-Gurion, Ben-Zvi, kibbutz leader
Yitzhak Tabenkin andJewish Agency Executive member Shlomo Kaplansky.Poale Zion's legacy
After
World War I ,David Ben-Gurion integrated most of Poale Zion Right inPalestine into hisAhdut HaAvoda party, which becameMapai by the 1930s. The Poale Zion Left merged with the kibbutz-basedHashomer Hatzair and the urban-based Socialist League to formMapam in 1948, which later gave merged with two smaller parties, Ratz and Shinui to formMeretz-Yachad . In 1946, a split in Mapai led to the creation of another small party, Ahdut HaAvoda - Zion Workers, which united with Mapam in 1948. In 1954, a small group of Mapam dissidents left the party, again assuming the Ahdut HaAvoda - Zion Workers name. That party eventually became part of the Alignment in a 1965 merger withMapai (and later included Rafi andMapam ). In 1992, the Alignment became the Israeli Labour Party.In North America, Poale Zion founded the
HeHalutz movement, theFarband andHabonim Dror , and later the Labor Zionist Organization of America, which merged with other groups into the Labor Zionist Alliance, which rebranded itself in 2007 asAmeinu . In Britain, Poale Zion rebranded itself in 2004 as theJewish Labour Movement .Internationally, the Poale Zion right is represented within the
World Zionist Organization byWorld Labour Zionist Movement ; the group "to the left" of the WLZM within the WZO is the World Union of Meretz.References
ee also
*
Jewish Communist Labour Party (Poalei Zion)
*Jewish Communist Party (Poalei Zion)
*Jewish Communist Union (Poalei Zion)
*Mifleget Poale Zion VeHaHugim HaMarksistim beEretz Yisrael
*Labour Zionism
* Gordonia
*Farband
*Jewish left External links
* [http://www.mideastweb.org/labor_zionism.htm A brief history of Labor and Socialist Zionism]
* [http://www.zionism-israel.com/dic/Poalei_Tziyon.htm Poale Zion]
* [http://www.zionism-israel.com/hdoc/ber_borochov_national_question.htm The National Question and Class Struggle - Ber Borochov 1905]
* [http://www.zionism-israel.com/hdoc/Poalei_Tziyon_1906.htm Poalei Tziyon - Our Platform -1906] Sets out the essential of Borochovian Marxist Zionism.
* [http://www.zionism-israel.com/hdoc/Borochov_Economic_Development.htm The Economic Development of the Jewish People - Ber Borochov 1916]
* [http://www.zionism-israel.com/hdoc/Poalei_Tziyon_Peace%20Manifesto_1917.htm Poalei Tziyon Peace Manifesto - 1917]
* [http://www.zionism-israel.com/hdoc/Borochov_Eretz_Yisrael_Program.htm Eretz Yisrael in our program and tactics, Ber Borochov, 1917]
* [http://www.angelfire.com/il2/borochov/bio.html Description of Poale Zion split- 1935]
* [http://www.angelfire.com/il2/borochov/duker2.html More detail on the split- 1937]
* [http://www.diapozytyw.pl/en/site/slownik_terminow/partie/ Diapositive Dictionary: Parties and political organizations]
* [http://www.jlm.org.uk/cgi-bin/sitetools.cgi?task=servepage&id=33 Jewish Labour Movement: History]
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