Chanie Rosenberg Archive | ETOL Main Page
From Socialist Worker, 13 May 2008.
Copied with thanks from the Socialist Worker Website.
Transcribed by Christian Høgsbjerg.
Marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
I am a staunch opponent of Israel now, but in the 1930s I joined Hashomer Hatzair, a left wing Zionist organisation. I went to Palestine to go into a kibbutz – which at the time I considered to be a cell of socialism.
After visiting one kibbutz which kept a stock of guns, I realised that the Zionists who were buying or stealing the Palestinians’ land were supported by the kibbutzim.
I heard a story from my own kibbutz about four Palestinian villages and four kibbutzim either side of a hill in Galilee.
The kibbutzim wanted to buy the Palestinians’ land and paid for it.
When the time for takeover arrived the Palestinian peasants said that they had received no money – the village head had pocketed it – so they wouldn’t leave. The kibbutz members went up the hill throwing stones at the peasants, who fled in terror.
I left the kibbutz and got a job as a governess. By this time I had met Tony Cliff – who went on to found the Socialist Workers Party.
A strike broke out at a British oil refinery employing both Arabs and Jews. We published a two-sided leaflet in Arabic and Hebrew supporting the strikers.
My employer found the leaflets and I got the sack. I then left the country.
Chanie Rosenberg Archive | ETOL Main Page
Last updated: 12 June 2021