The attacks by Hamas in southern Israel have left a paradox: most of the dead, injured, kidnapped and most of the families, who live in the kibbutz near the border with Gaza, were progressive Israelis, pacifists and supporters of negotiation with the Palestinians to resolve once and for all the eternal conflict.
“80% of the kibbutzim in this area vote centre-left”, said Haaretz journalist Amir Tibon at the beginning of September, next to the border fence with Gaza, to a group of European media, including La Vanguardia. A month later, Tibon and his family saved their lives – unlike many of the neighbors – after resisting for ten hours in a panic room in their home in the terrorist-occupied Nahal Oz kibbutz.
Although there are kibbutzim where right-wing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud is winning, the fact that most residents of these communities are Labor has a historical origin. The kibbutzim were born at the beginning of the 20th century, when, after the failure of the 1905 revolution in Russia, many Jews from that country decided to move to the promised land – then ruled by the Ottoman Empire – inspired by socialist ideas of Marx and the pacifist and collectivist postulates of Tolstoy. The first kibbutz, Degania, was founded in 1909 on the shores of Lake Tiberias.
“They were agricultural communities with a socialist model of life, with a collective way of life, where everything belongs to everyone, no one has a salary, everything is shared; the children all slept together and not with their parents, for example,” Daniel Alaluf, director for Ibero-America of the Zionist organization Keren Hayesod, tells La Vanguardia from Tel-Aviv. “The kibbutzim were born inspired by Marxism, but their goal is not to make the Marxist revolution, but they are looking for a practical way to settle in Jewish land and make the land of Israel flourish,” he says.
“These communities have had many changes in the last thirty years; there are still some socialist kibbutzim, others have been privatized and the assets have been divided, and in others houses have even been sold to private individuals who live with the community”, explains Alaluf.
Many of the kibbutzim in southern Israel affected by the killing of Hamas were populated by Latin American Jews since the mid-fifties of the last century.
Alaluf says that it is “very ironic that they have killed precisely the residents of the kibbutz”, taking into account the majority affiliation to the left and to pacifism, but points out that, “in Israel, the people of the center-left are still patriotic”. And remember that many historical and current military commanders are progressives.
For her part, also from Tel-Aviv, Ilana Dayan explains to La Vanguardia that “the fact that many kibbutz residents are aligned with progressivism does not mean that they do not demand security from the Government”. Dayan is one of the most recognized and popular journalists in Israel. “Despite being centre-left, they believe that the Government must solve the problem of Hamas. The left and the right will tell you this. Nobody can live when two kilometers from your house there are people whose only purpose is to kill Israelis and who say that the State of Israel should not exist”, he adds.
Dayan assures that Israelis are now “in a state of shock, traumatized, trying to understand how this happened to us” and that is also why “the left agrees that the only way to ensure that Hamas cannot repeat something like that is attacking Gaza”. The journalist insists that in these moments of shock the Israelis think that “it is the moment when Israel can collect the price of this atrocity”.
On how this surprise attack can affect Netanyahu’s political future, Dayan says that “there is no prime minister who can recover from such a disaster”. And he adds that “politics in Israel is broken by what happened in the last ten months”, with reference to the protests against Netanyahu’s controversial judicial reform. He remembers that “the people of the kibbutzim were active in the protests and now they have become victims”. Dayan cites the interview he did on his radio program a few days ago with one of the survivors of the attacks, who told him: “The Government called us anarchists and said we hurt Israel. Are we the traitors?”
Regarding the innocent Palestinian victims caused by Israel in Gaza, Dayan says that the state of shock means that in Israel there are still no “voices that criticize the indiscriminate bombing, which is something that the left has always criticized” , and predicts that it is something that will soon be questioned “probably due to international pressure”.
