Tanฤฑl Bora*
One of the most shocking aspects of the attack by Hamas on Israel on October 7th, which targeted a music and entertainment festival and the Be’eri kibbutz village, was the “Event.” It was an act of brutality that went beyond the killing of civilians; it was the killing of civilian life – the killing of life itself. There is no doubt about it.
The reaction of the international community to this horrific incident, particularly their acceptance of the cruelty of the Israeli state’s mentality, is also a form of cruelty. Isn’t the term “humanoid animal” uttered by official mouths, in itself, a murder of humanity? The public opinion’s inability to forget the daily deaths of the people living in the land of Palestine, their indifference, and their turning a blind eye to it is nothing less than cold-hearted cruelty. Even without the current blockade of these days, can the term “cruelty” adequately describe what has been done to Gaza, which has been suffering under a constant siege regime for years? If there is such a thing as the “fascism of the 21st century,” is it not one of the pioneers of its ideological and technical know-how through the operations of the Israeli state as a ruthless security state and an exceptional regime?
When we speak of cynicism, one of its encyclopedic meanings should be the perspective of the “West” on the Palestinian-Israeli issue. While the slogan “Black lives matter” has inspired the movement to consider all lives, Palestinian lives matter, we should not forget that, but it is a feeble cry.
The horrifying and disheartening big picture is as follows… Shall we take a look at a small picture? Let’s think about the concept of the kibbutz through the destroyed kibbutz settlement Be’eri; it serves as an opportunity to reconsider what has been lost in those parts.
Kibbutzim, meaning “collective” or “together” in Hebrew, are predominantly rural communal-collective communities. They played a historical role in the settlement of Israel and the cultivation of the land. They were the romantic representatives and passionate implementers of the pioneering-settlement spirit of the Zionist project. Between 1967 and 1982, 24 kibbutzim established in the Golan Heights, the Jordan Valley, and the southern Gaza Strip took the lead in settling the occupied territories. It is not groundless that the Palestinian liberation movement primarily associated the kibbutzim with the role they played in occupation, settlement, and (especially in the early stages) military/para-military organization.[1]
In Turkey, the kibbutz was a theme in the anti-communist discourse, especially during the heyday of the movement in the 1960s and early 1970s. On June 19, 1972, State Minister ฤฐlhan รztrak assured the Turkish Grand National Assembly that the draft land reform law being prepared in the legislature respected private property by saying, “[the draft] does not bring a socialist order like the kibbutz.” He explained it like this: “In the kibbutz, the means of production and tools are cooperative… Nobody owns their property here. Everyone works as a laborer. The kibbutz gives everyone what it deems necessary, whatever they need; if they need education, it provides education; if they want to go on vacation, it sends them on vacation… This is the most advanced socialist system.” Yes, during those times, the kibbutz was one of the symbols of the Turkish anti-communism.
Indeed, the kibbutz movement is part of the legacy of socialist-communist thought and experience. It contains a case for the utopia of equality. Its underdiscussed nature as part of this experience, perhaps due to its local-national character (although, weren’t the collective farms in the Soviet Union also local-national?), is, without a doubt, related to anti-Semitic stereotypes.
The concept of the kibbutz was born within the left wing of Zionism. Among its intellectual sources, there is a reinterpretation of Marx’s concept of the “union of free producers” with a utopian socialist perspective, along with a cooperative-based grassroots-up approach to building socialism. The inspiration of existentialist philosopher Martin Buber is also present. In the context of the Socialist Workers’ Party line, which stands between the communists and social democrats, Menachem Gerson’s speech in 1934 is an epic summary of the philosophy of the kibbutz. Gerson argues that in capitalist society, “the sense of life and the integrity of man” are lost; desires are constantly postponed, and life becomes a means to an end, the “manure of ‘Later’.” This is also the weakness of established institutional socialist movements in his view. Political goals turn into an end in themselves, their content unquestioned, and they move away from addressing life directly. However, as the kibbutz thinker argues, “Human beings need individuals they confront in the world they encounter day by day, the ‘You’s that they confront with their own ‘I’s… The deep longing we feel for a ‘You’ in ourselves.” (Here, Buber’s voice follows.) At a time when Stalinism prevailed, Gerson established the principle of “walking on a path that is of the same essence as the goals,” and he argued that this does not show a concrete target to anyone, only shows a way. As a part of the experience, the kibbutz movement belongs to the tradition of an alternative development of social relationships in the context of socialism-communism, which seeks to create them from today, without postponing them to after the revolution (a tradition that can be called anarchist, utopian, radical-reformist, or ‘revolutionary’-reformist).
Kibbutzim began to be founded in Israel in 1909. In the 1920s, the Russian – and Bolshevik – origin Emek Legion gave the movement a new impetus. Although they achieved what seemed to be formidable successes in agricultural development, contrary to their rural fame, they also turned to industry. Concerning the desire for equality, they saw socialism as increasing general welfare. The issue of whether a micro-scale socialist production model could live on and the concept of “alternative economy” or “parallel economy” models were debated for years. When they took the step towards industrialization, it was only after long discussions that they accepted limited wage labor due to a shortage of labor force from outside (“So we don’t become exploiters!”). Nevertheless, the neoliberal transformation hit the kibbutzim, and they increasingly embraced market-oriented practices. Some kibbutzim continue to adhere to socialist principles, but there are also kibbutzim that import cheap migrant labor from Thailand. Their share in agricultural production is still significant, but their overall impact has decreased, and their share of the population has dropped from 6% to 4%.
Key figures in the Israeli left and, most importantly, the founding cadres of the peace movement came from the kibbutz movement. Today’s kibbutz movement members, generally, support the right of the Palestinian Arab state to exist. They usually emphasize the importance of good relations with their Arab neighbors. The first Jewish-Arab joint school in Israel came from a kibbutz. The weakening of the kibbutz movement, which has experienced a shift to the right, particularly in its base, is undoubtedly one of the reasons for the rise of right-wing trends, including increasing racism, in Israel.
When evaluating the kibbutz movement in terms of its legacy of socialism-communism, let’s look at its ‘internal politics.’
As a fundamental Marxist ideal, the abolition of the separation between mental and manual labor was one of the basic principles of the kibbutz; everyone had to do every job. In line with the principles of “from each according to their ability” and “to each according to their needs” and the realization of oneself, they emphasized not only income equality but also equality of opportunities. According to a “personal budget” that regulated consumption possibilities, each member had the opportunity to acquire a certain amount of goods and services in specific categories. They couldn’t transfer consumption items between categories (a concept called “inclusive budget,” which allowed shifting was the subject of long debates).
Direct democracy was essential. Every Saturday, a general assembly that included all adults would meet and discuss every issue in daily life and personal life. Management responsibilities, including representatives going to national federations, were subject to absolute rotation. The places where administrators ate and where they lived could not be separate.
Children were raised as the collective’s common children, separate from their families. Amos Oz, in his story “A Little Boy,” tells how parents can stay with their children for a while at night and read a story – then kiss them and leave. “Communism” as a perfect picture!
The tension between the confidence derived from everyone being responsible for everyone, and the ancient tension between being suffocated by embrace, perhaps as an eternal dilemma of socialist-communist utopia, is most evident in the kibbutz experience.
Amos Oz, one of the most famous kibbutz members in the world, beautifully describes the struggle one has to face constantly with their nature and temperaments in kibbutz life: “Like a river’s current constantly polishing pebbles, we would constantly polish each other.”[3] Amos Oz’s journey to becoming a writer, which fits well with the “communism” scare, is a typical kibbutz experience. When his first story was published at the age of twenty-two, he asked for a few “free hours” to write by showing it as “evidence” at the weekly meeting. After hours of discussion (“If everyone insists on writing, doing art, who will milk the cows?”), it was agreed that he could have one “writing day” a week in exchange for working extra hours on other days. Only at the age of thirty-six, he would be assigned a small study. At the end of his life, he would say that he still missed “that anarchy and directness, that cheekiness and the joy of arguing, the lack of any hierarchy.” [4]
Amos Oz argued for the inevitability and right of an independent Palestinian state to be established until he took his last breath in December 2018 at the age of 79, and he called on Israelis to accept it.
As the big picture shifts from black and white to starkly different shades, insisting on looking at the fine distinctions and all the contradictions in the small pictures feels like an insistence on civilization to me.
[1] Mahmoud Sayed elaborated on this extensively in the August 1988 issue of Al Karamah magazine (German: “Zur militรคrischen Funktion des Kibbuz.”)
[2] For those interested, I can only provide German sources. Gunnar Heinsohn (ed.), Das Kibbutz-Modell. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt a. M. 2015 (2nd edition); Christiane Busch-Lรผty, Leben und Arbeiten im Kibbuz, Bund-Verlag, Cologne 1989, pp. 31-48; Daniel Demalach, โDie politische รkonomie der Kibbuz-Bewegung,โ Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, December 2018; Rudolf Stumberger, โIsrael: Das Erbe der sozialistischen Kibbutzim,โ June 5, 2023, ND aktuell.
[3] The title of the book where he tells his kibbutz experience with stories is suitable for its subject: Friends in Between. Amos Oz, Unter Freunden. Suhrkamp, Berlin 2013.
[4] Shira Hadad, Interview with Amos Oz, What Is an Apple? Suhrkamp, Berlin 2019, pp. 91 et seq., 102.
*Tanฤฑl Bora was born in 1963 in Ankara. He graduated from Istanbul Boysโ High School, then Ankara University Political Science Faculty. He was a journalist atย Yeni Gรผndem, a weekly news journal, in between 1984-88. He has been the research / reading editor in ฤฐletiลim Publishing since 1988. In between 1993 and 2014, he was the editorial director inย Toplum & Bilimย Journal, a social science journal published every three months. In 2012, he became the editorial coordinator ofย Birikim, a monthly socialist culture journal for which he was writing articles since 1989.
This article originally was published in Turkish in Birikim Magazine on October 18, 2023 and translated into English by Politurco.
