“Be Strong and Faithful”: The Arab Pioneer Youth Movement in Jewish Kibbutzim, 1951-1965
The Arab Pioneer Youth Movement was an extraordinary initiative of Israeli Kibbutzim, which invited young Arabs to live, work and study in the communal settlements between 1951 and 1961. Relying on oral interviews conducted for over a decade, on memoirs, reports and newspaper articles, this article...
Kaydedildi:
| Yayımlandı: | URI:https://journals.openedition.org/rhc, |
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| Yazar: | |
| Materyal Türü: | Article ou chapitre numérique |
| Dil: | Anglais |
| Baskı/Yayın Bilgisi: |
Revue d'histoire culturelle
2023
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| Online Erişim: | Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM |
| Özet: | The Arab Pioneer Youth Movement was an extraordinary initiative of Israeli Kibbutzim, which invited young Arabs to live, work and study in the communal settlements between 1951 and 1961. Relying on oral interviews conducted for over a decade, on memoirs, reports and newspaper articles, this article presents the dual perspective of its Arab and Jewish participants, focusing on their mutual perceptions. The study suggests that by attempting to include Arabs in the Kibbutz – as many as 1,800 young men at the movement’s peak – Jewish leaders of left-wing Hashomer Hatzair were seeking to settle the dissonance between their socialist ideology and their practical role in spearheading the fervent Zionist settlement effort. Arab participants, on the other hand, were seeking professional training and refuge from military rule restrictions and from the dire conditions of life in their villages after the Nakba. The most avid Arab youth tried – unsuccessfully – to establish an Arab Kibbutz or become Kibbutz members. The movement’s participants – both Arabs and Jews – were considered as heretical and even deviant in their own distinct communities. This deviance partly explains both the movement’s surprising initial success and its inevitable failure. The idyllic endeavor of the Arab Pioneer Youth left a bitter-sweet legacy of shattered dreams, serving as a poignant example of the grid of power relations between Arabs and Jews in Israel during the 1950s and 1960s. |
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