Hashomer Hatzair
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Hashomer Hatzair (or Hashomer Hatsair or HaShomer HaTzair) (Hebrew: "The Young Guard" or "Guardian [that is] Young") is a Zionist-socialist youth movement founded in 1913 in Galicia (now in Poland) and was also the name of the group's political party in the Yishuv in the pre-1948 British Mandate of Palestine.
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[edit] Hashomer Hatzair Today
Today, Hashomer Hatzair remains as a youth movement operating internationally. In Europe, Latin America and Australia, Hashomer Hatzair organizes regular activities and camps (machanot) for the youth. Activities are still relatively ideological, but have over time been adapted to the needs of modern communities, vastly different from those context in which Hashomer Hatzair was created.
The movement has 7000 members worldwide (excluding Israel) running weekly youth activities and camps in Germany, Canada, the United States, Mexico, Venezuela, Brazil, Argentina. Uruguay, Chile, France, Belgium. Austria, Italy, Switzerland, Netherlands, Hungary, Bulgaria, Belarus, Ukraine and Australia.
Famous alumni include Arik Einstein, Tony Cliff, Ernest Mandel, Mordecai Anielewicz, Abraham Leon, Benny Morris, Eliane Karp, Leopold Trepper, Amnon Linn, Abba Hushi, Sam Spiegel, Irv Weinstein, Manès Sperber, José Gurvich and even Isser Harel and Menachem Begin who were briefly members before joining Mapai and the right wing Betar respectively, as well as Kerem B'Yavneh's Rabbi Avraham Rivlin. Noam Chomsky sympathized with and worked with the group, although he was never a member.
With the merger of the United Kibbutz Movement and Kibbutz Artzi, the likelihood of a merger between Hashomer Hatzair and UKM's youth movement, Habonim Dror has increased and the two youth movements, once rivals, have increasingly co-operated in various countries where they co-exist. Both movements even share an office in New York. However, the views of each movement on religion may be an obstacle to merger as Habonim Dror has a stronger identification with cultural Judaism as opposed to Hashomer Hatzair, which has been at times stridently secular and anti-religious.
[edit] Australia
The movement in Australia is located in Melbourne and was established in 1954 as a break away from Habonim Dror. There was briefly a ken (branch) in Sydney during the 1960's. Many of the original bogrim (leaders) of Australian Hashomer Hatzair settled in Kibbutz Nirim. Its building in Melbourne is known as Beit Anielewicz and is currently being upgraded. It runs weekly meetings as well as biannual camps which take place in the Australian outback.
[edit] USA and Canada
In the United States and Canada camps are organized which last through the school summer break. The summer camp in Upstate New York and Perth, Canada is called Camp Shomria. Hashomer Hatzair runs educational activities promoting the peace process and withdrawal from the West Bank and Gaza.
Through seminars, camps (winter/summer), worldwide programs and weekly activities in which youth lead youth, Hashomer Hatzair aims to create a just world through socialism, equality of people, and the betterment of Israel and the world.
[edit] Israel
After the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, the Hashomer Hatzair political party merged with other left wing parties to form Mapam which became the political party of both the youth movement and the Kibbutz Artzi federation. In Israel it is was traditionally aligned with Mapam and later Meretz. It is not officially aligned with Meretz's successor party, Yachad, due to a recent merger of its parent organization, the Meretz-aligned Kibbutz Artzi Federation with the Labour Party's United Kibbutz Movement, Hashomer Hatzair is officially not aligned with either party though, by tradition, it is close in outlook to Yachad.
[edit] South Africa
Hashomer Hatzair operated in South Africa until sometime in the 1980s when the South Africa government banned the movement and arrested it's members because of their anti-apartheid teachings and activism.
