Hashomer Hatzair
Description
Yotam Marom:
"a communal, socialist-zionist youth movement, Hashomer Hatzair. Hashomer Hatzair was founded in 1913 in Eastern Europe as an ideological and organizational response to anti-semitism, a counter-attack on the alienation fomented by industrial capitalism, and a rejection of right-wing zionism. In its past, the youth movement was one of the driving forces behind the Israeli Kibbutz Movement and the attempt to create a secular, bi-national state in Israel, as well as many of the Jewish uprisings against the Nazis during the Second World War (including the famous Warsaw Ghetto Uprising). Today, Hashomer Hatzair finds itself navigating the complex terrain of asserting that Jews are a community deserving a right to self-determination, while opposing the Israeli occupation and maintaining that Israel should be a secular, pluralistic country that affords equal rights to all of its citizens. Currently, there are three urban communes in North America that developed through Hashomer Hatzair, as well as dozens of the same in Israel." (http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/22040)