Holidays of the Revolution

Amir Locker-Biletzki

Description

Holidays of the Revolution explores a little-known chapter in the history of Mandatory Palestine and the State of Israel: the Israeli Communist Party and its youth movement, which posed a radical challenge to Zionism. Amir Locker-Biletzki examines the development of this movement from 1919 to 1965, concentrating on how Communists built a distinctive identity through myth and ritual. He addresses three key themes: identity construction through Jewish holidays (Hanukkah and Passover), through civic holidays (Holocaust Remembrance Day and Israeli Independence Day), and through Soviet and working-class myths and ceremonies (May Day and the October Revolution). He also shows how Jewish Communists viewed, interacted, and celebrated with their Palestinian comrades. Using extensive archival and newspaper sources, Locker-Biletzki argues that Jewish-Israeli Communists created a unique, dissident subculture. Simultaneously negating and absorbing the culture of Socialist-Zionism and Israeli Republicanism—as well as Soviet and left-wing–European traditions—Jewish Communists forged an Israeli identity beyond the bounds of Zionism.
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments

Introduction

1. Basic Concepts and Political Ritual

2. The Creation of a Jewish Progressive Tradition

3. Holocaust, Independence, and Remembrance in Israeli Communist Commemoration

4. Workers' Utopia and Reality in Israeli Communism

5. Revolution and the Soviet Union among Israeli Communists

6. Jewish-Arab Fraternity: Language, Perception, Symbol, and Ritual

Conclusion

Notes
Bibliography
Index

Sujets

• Israël
• Political party
• History of the Middle East
• Israel

Informations

• Publié par: State University of New York Press
• Date de parution: 01 décembre 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781438480879
• Langue: English

Extrait

Communist Identity in Israel, 1919–1965
Amir Locker-Biletzki
Cover image: Tamar and Yorm Gozansky. Palestinian and Jewish Banki members strike a heroic pose, Acra, 1951. Reprinted with permission.
Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2020 State University of New York
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Printed in the United States of America
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For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Name: Locker-Biletzki, Amir, 1973– author.
Title: Holidays of the revolution : communist identity in Israel, 1919–1965 / Amir Locker-Biletzki.
Description: Albany : State University of New York Press, [2020] | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020018352 | ISBN 9781438480855 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781438480879 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Communists—Israel—History—20th century. | Jewish communists—Israel—History—20th century. | Communism and Judaism—Israel—History—20th century. | Nationalism—Israel—History—20th century. | Holidays—Israel—History—20th century. | Israel—Social life and customs.
Classification: LCC HX378.5.A6 L53 2020 | DDC 335.43095694/09041—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020018352
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Contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter 1 Basic Concepts and Political Ritual
Chapter 2 The Creation of a Jewish Progressive Tradition
Chapter 3 Holocaust, Independence, and Remembrance in Israeli Communist Commemoration
Chapter 4 Workers’ Utopia and Reality in Israeli Communism
Chapter 5 Revolution and the Soviet Union among Israeli Communists
Chapter 6 Jewish-Arab Fraternity: Language, Perception, Symbol, and Ritual
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Illustrations
Figure 2.1 Hanukkah party in a Banki club in Tel Aviv in the 1950s
Figure 3.1 Banki members celebrating the 1950 Israeli Independence Day
Figure 4.1 Communist marchers, May Day 1944, Tel Aviv
Figure 4.2 Banki display, May Day 1957, Tel Aviv
Figure 4.3 May Day 1958, Tel Aviv
Figure 4.4 Banki section in the 1953 May Day march
Figure 4.5 Banki members’ parade on May Day 1957 104
Figure 5.1 Victory parade, May 12, 1945, Tel Aviv
Figure 5.2 Poster commemorating the thirty-third anniversary of the October Revolution
Figure 5.3 Poster for the thirty-fourth anniversary of the Russian Revolution
Figure 5.4 Poster for the fortieth anniversary of the October Revolution
Figure 6.1 Palestinian and Jewish Banki members, Acra 1951 145
Figure 6.2 The Pioneer Trumpeter, 1930 146
Figure 6.3 Arab-Jewish Youth Festival, 1949 152
Acknowledgments
The men and women of Israeli Communism, their struggles, achievements, failures, and flaws, have been the center of my intellectual life for sixteen years. My thanks go to those who opened their homes and memories to me and helped me understand the holidays of the revolution. I am also beholden to those who shaped my intellectual curiosity and encouraged my continued interest in the history, culture, and identity of the Communists in Palestine/Israel. Avner Ben-Amos, Alan McDougall, Meir Amor, and Anat Biletzki challenged and expanded my thought, making my work and this book better for it. Special recognition goes to Jasmin Habib, a teacher, a mentor, and a friend. Our ongoing passionate debates about the Communist Party—infused with her and my intimate knowledge and love for the men and women of the party—are reflected in Holidays of the Revolution .
Thanks are due to Csaba Nikolenyi for his encouragement and advice, which were vital for me to start writing this book. He, together with the infallible Jennifer Solomon, gave me the space, during my 2016–2017 year of fellowship in the Azrieli Institute of Israel Studies at Concordia University, to begin the road that ended in this book. I also owe a debt of gratitude to Rafael Chaiken, my editor, for steadfast support and patience that made this book possible. He and the staff of State University of New York Press deserve singular appreciation.
I want to thank Yael, my partner and the bedrock upon which my life stands. Without her help and love this book may well have not been written. Our children Eyal and Illy are and forever will be the love of my life. Underlying this book are the ideals of social justice and internationalist solidarity. I hope these values will be theirs as much as they are my own. My father did not live to see me publish this book and I am certain that it would have been a source of great pride for him. This book is dedicated to him.
Introduction
On a beautiful noon in May of 2009, a crowd of about 1,000 to 1,500 congregated at a Jerusalem mountain overlooking the ancient village of Abu Ghosh. Beside the stone monument in the foreground, overlooking the wooded valley below, stood a small podium decorated with a photographic image taken by Yevgeny Khaldei of a Soviet soldier waving the flag over the Reichstag. Behind it, in anachronistic defiance of post-1991 reality, the Israeli flag flew alongside the Soviet flag. The ceremony at the foot of the monument was simple, made up of speeches in Hebrew, Russian, and Arabic and the laying of wreaths. The audience consisted mainly of young Palestinians, many of them adorned in red and bearing the image of Che Guevara; Communist youth members in white shirts and red scarves intermingling with older party members; Arabs and Jews; and the representatives of the Russian delegation in Tel Aviv. At the end of the ceremony, the participants held a mass picnic, with the youth singing revolutionary songs in Arabic while engaged in barbecuing. This mixture of ritual and mass picnic commemorating the Soviet victory in World War II is organized by the Israeli Communist Party and its affiliated organizations, and it has taken place every year since 1950. This cultural practice and others like it lie at the heart of this book, which deals with the rites of the Jewish Communist subculture of the 1920s to the mid-1960s.
The basic premise of this book is twofold. First, I argue that the Jewish Communists developed a unique subculture of their own in the years 1919 to 1965. This subculture was formed in a process of negation and absorption vis-à-vis two local political cultures: the dominant Socialist-Zionist culture of pre-1948 Palestine, to the point that the Communists participated in the political culture around them as a dissident stance in Socialist-Zionist discourse, and the statist culture of the post-1948 State of Israel. Another influence that shaped the Jewish Israeli Communist subculture was the Soviet and East German cultures and the traditions of the European Left. Through its cultural practices, rituals, myths, and symbols, the Jewish Communist subculture disseminated its values among the members of the Communist Party and its youth movement. Second, I claim here that the cultural practices of the Jewish Communists were used to create a distinct Jewish-Israeli Communist identity, made up of Jewish traditional, Israeli local, and Soviet and left-wing European elements. This identity was created within the confines of the Communist subculture and outside the mechanisms that created a Jewish-Israeli native culture in Palestine/Israel.
The merger, in 1954, of MAKI (Israeli Communist Party) and Banki (Israeli Young Communist League) with the Socialist Left Party 1 led by Moshe Sneh was a watershed in both the political and cultural history of post-1948 Israeli Communism. I contend that this event upset the equilibrium between the local and universal elements in MAKI and Banki. In an attempt to give the party and its youth movement an Israeli character (in effect transforming it into a Zionist movement), the “Left Men” accelerated the adaptation of local Israeli elements at the expense of the Communist ones, thus contributing not just to the political but also to the cultural disintegration of MAKI.
Historiography of Israeli Communism
Communism in Palestine/Israel has drawn relatively thin scholarly attention, although scholars of different stripes have debated its history and created a small body of works about its different aspects. The Israeli Communist movement has been the subject of scholarly attention since 1948, beginning with the article “Communist Tactics in Palestine” by Martin Ebon. 2 The historiography of Communism in Israel can be differentiated into three groups: Zionist-Jewish historians; cultural historians, some of them post-Zionist and others not identified as such; and Palestinian historians. The main paradigm dominating the field is the question concerning the relation between Palestinians and Jews within the party. Historians of Communism in Palestine/Israel depict the Communist Party as having been perpetually torn between the national orientations of its members. Zionist historians argue that Communism inevitably clashed with Zionism and that the Arabization of the party after the 1929 riots prevented the party from becoming truly binational, that is, Palestinian and Jewish. 3 By contrast, the Palestinian historians researching Communist history in pre-1948 Palestine claim that there was an ever-growing compatibility between Palestinian nationalism and the party. Driven by a desire to locate the Pa