Wednesday, July 02, 2014

Before Gush Emunim, There Was HaShomer HaTzair

On February 14, 1947, the HaShomer HaTzair movement founded its new kibbutz, Revadim, in Gush Etzion and at the founding ceremony a declaration was read out:


The Declaration reads, in part:

Listen O Nahalin!  Listen to the voices of your sons!  We have come unto you this day, to find in you a homeland, and a home.  At a time when from our shores just last night, persecuted brothers were expelled when but on the previous day hundreds of hands knocked on your gates.  Hundreds of eyes sought you out and hundreds of hearts were broken at your beaches.

You shall see the land from afar  --- that is the edict of the alienated regime.  From afar you shall come but you will not enter it.

Expulsions and strangling edicts will not overcome us.  A persecuted nation will find its way despite all obstructions that are put up to block it.  A nation requires a homeland.  The desolation of this country can only be cultivated by our hands for this is the mighty power that has stood by us.

Nahlin, receive us to your bosom as a mother for unto you we have returned, your sons.  To find in you a homeland and home...

^

2 comments:

Louis Lipsky said...

My mother's cousins, Sarah [nee Bodek] and Shmulik Paltiel were among the founders of Kfar Blum, a kibbutz of the Ichud [MaPaM die-hard socialists] organization. On one visit of ours there, Shmulik poured some home-made brandy. He raised his glass at me in a toast and said: "leChaim [to life], leShalom [to peace] uleh-Eretz Yisrael haShleima [and to a sovereign Greater Israel]. We drank, and I asked: Shmulik, on this Ichud kibbutz you can toast to Greater Israel? Shmulik answered: yes, yes; you are right. there are people here who have forgotten what Zionism is, but I am not one of them!"

NormanF said...

I'm waiting for Meretz, the descendant of the Hashomer Ha'Tzair, to denounce this barbaric crime of Zionist settlement perpetrated upon the poor Arabs by their socialist forbears.