Poale Zion

Poale Zion (also spelled Poalei Tziyon or Poaley Syjon, meaning "Workers of Zion") was a Movement of Marxist Zionist Jewish workers circles founded in various cities of the Russian Empire about the turn of the century after the Bund rejected Zionism 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 in New York City in 1903. Branches were formed in London and Leeds in 1903/04 and 1905 respectively. In November 1905 the Poale Zion (Workers of Zion) Party was founded in Palestine and a month later the Socialist Jewish Labour Party (Poale Zion) was formed in the United States and Canada. In March 1906 the Jewish Social Democratic Labour Party (Poale Zion) was created in Russia. In 1906 a formal Poale Zion party was formed in Poltava, Ukraine, under the leadership of Ber Borochov, and other groups were soon formed elsewhere in Europe, including in Poland, Austria and the UK.

The key features of the ideology of early Poale Zion were acceptance of the Marxist view of history with the addition of the role of nationalism, 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 the class 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. During World War I, Poale Zion was instrumental in recruiting members to the Jewish 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 (by Sidney Webb and Arthur Henderson) of the 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.

Split
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 been David Ben-Gurion, who joined a local Poalei Tziyon group in 1904 as a student at the University of Warsaw, and Yitzhak 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, Linke Poale Tzion) 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 to Marxism and Communism, and repeatedly lobbied the Soviet Union for membership in the Communist 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 the Communist Party of Palestine. The former retained its links to the Poale Zion left. These two factions would reunite as the Palestine Communist Party in 1923 and become an official section of the Communist International. Another faction of the Left Poale Zion aligned with the kibbutz movement Hashomer Hatzair, founded in Europe in 1919, would eventually become the Mapam party. The Poale Zion Right under Ben Gurion's leadership formed Ahdut HaAvoda in 1919 which in 1930 would merge with another party to become Mapai, the predecessor of the modern Israeli Labor Party.

The Poale Zion Left in Russia participated in the Bolshevik revolution. Borochov himself returned to Russia following the February Revolution and organized brigades of Poale Zion activists, nicknamed "Borochov Brigades", to fight in the Red Army. The party remained legal until 1928 when it was liquidated by the NKVD. 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 the Communist 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.

The World Union of Poalei Zion (i.e. the PZ rightwing) was a member of the Labour and Socialist International between 1923 and 1930 (as its Palestinian section).

As of 1928, the World Union of Poalei Zion (i.e. the PZ rightwing) claimed to have 22,500 members in its sections 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 B. Locker. The World Union had a women's wing, the Women's Organization for the Pioneer Women in Palestine.

As well as their differing attitudes towards Stalinism, the two wings of Poale Zion also parted ways concerning the use of and development of Yiddish and Yiddish culture, with the Left generally being more supportive of Yiddish culture, similar to the members of the Jewish 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 including Hashomer Hatzair, Dror, Bnei Akiva, the Jewish Bund, various Jewish Communist groups, and both factions of Poale Zion.

Several notable Jewish resistance fighters during the Holocaust, particularly those involved in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, were members of Poale Zion. They include:


 * Adolf Berman, Warsaw ZOB fighter; Secretary of Zegota. (Poale Zion Left)
 * Hersz Berlinski, member of Warsaw ZOB Command (Poale Zion Left)
 * Yochanan Morgenstern, member of Warsaw ZOB Command (Poale Zion Right)
 * Emanuel 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 movement leader Yitzhak Tabenkin and Jewish Agency Executive member Shlomo Kaplansky.

Poale Zion's legacy
After World War I, David Ben-Gurion integrated most of Poale Zion Right in Palestine into his Ahdut HaAvoda party, which became Mapai by the 1930s. The Poale Zion Left merged with the kibbutz-based Hashomer Hatzair and the urban-based Socialist League to form Mapam in 1948, which later merged with two smaller parties, Ratz and Shinui to form Meretz-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 with Mapai (and later included Rafi and Mapam). In 1992, the Alignment became the Israeli Labour Party.

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. In Britain, Poale Zion rebranded itself in 2004 as the Jewish Labour Movement.

Internationally, the Poale Zion right is represented within the World Zionist Organization by World Labour Zionist Movement; the group "to the left" of the WLZM within the WZO is the World Union of Meretz.